Researchers at Harvard Medical School in Boston unexpectedly developed a vaccine for cholera that works faster than the disease spreads, according to Scientific American.
For the study, published June 13 in Science Translational Medicine, researchers used a highly virulent cholera strain taken from the Haiti outbreak to make the live vaccine, which they named HaitiV. During animal testing, researchers discovered the vaccine colonized in the small intestine just as quickly as the original cholera pathogen, thereby serving as a near-immediate probiotic against the virus.
Robert Hall PhD, a microbiologist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said this vaccine could reduce the need for antibiotic treatment and therefore lower the risk of causing increased antibiotic resistance in cholera.
Researchers believe the study's findings could lead to other ways of treating bacterial diseases such as Escherichia coli and Clostridium difficle without antibiotics.
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