Urinary tract infection is caused by bacteria. They are present in the urine, and multiply until they come into contact with the kidneys, if not treated in time. Women are affected more often than men, and they sometimes experience recurrences: the infection is more frequent and more difficult to treat. “Even if you remove the bacteria from the bladder, the population continues elsewhere and usually becomes so antibiotic resistance used, explains Nicole DeNesco, assistant professor of biology. When patients acquire antibiotic resistance, the options will eventually run out.” To provide them with another solution, the scientist is working with her team to develop a vaccine against urinary tract infections. The results of their research appeared in ACS nano.

What are the risks of urinary tract infections?

“Patients lose their bladder to save their lives because bacteria cannot be killed with antibiotics or due to severe antibiotic sensitivity, which is more common in the elderly than people realizeUntreated or poorly treated UTIs can lead to Sepsis, a potentially fatal condition.

New Vaccine Model

Scientists have developed a model for Serum It is known as a whole cell vaccine. To protect us from infection, vaccines work by putting a small amount of killed or weakened pathogens, or some of their components, into the body. These antigens cause the immune system to produce antibodies against a specific disease. It is difficult to build vaccines against pathogenic bacteria because bacteria are much larger and more complex than viruses. Often, vaccines contain only a small portion of the bacteria, because when stored as a whole, their shelf life is too short to elicit an immune response. In this experiment, the scientists used a method called precipitation of MOF antigens which “It allows healthy and dead pathogens to exist in tissues for a longer period, as if it were an infection, in order to provoke a large-scale immune response.”.

Efficacy validated in an experiment on mice

To test the serum, scientists used a strain of bacteria Escherichia coli, responsible for about 80% of urinary tract infections. “When we injected these mice with a lethal dose of the bacteria, after vaccinating them, nearly all of our animals survived, which is a much better performance than traditional vaccination methods.Jeremiah Gassensmith, co-author of the study. This result has been seen many times, and we are very impressed with its reliability.. “Before it can be used in humans, the effects of this vaccine must be confirmed in future studies.