Targets for active vaccination against Staphylococcus aureus

Wijers, M.E. (2011) Targets for active vaccination against Staphylococcus aureus. Bachelor's Thesis, Biology.

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Abstract

Staphylococcus aureus is a bacterium that colonizes human, most of the times in the nares, where it normally does not provoke disease. However, when the bacterial activity increases, or when the immune system of the host is impaired, S. aureus can cause a great variety of diseases such as septic shock, toxic shock or necrotizing pneumonia. S. aureus gets increasingly resistant to antibiotics. In some countries the amount of S. aureus that is resistant to methycillin, the first choice antibiotic to combat S. aureus, is even higher than 40%. Furthermore, there are also methycillin resistant S. aureus that are multidrug resistant. This resistance is a great problem in fighting S. aureus infections. Therefore, a new way of combating S. aureus must be found. Recently, many studies have been done to compose a vaccine to fight S. aureus. In this review targets for active vaccination are discussed of which is already known that the antigens elicit an antibody response in human. These targets are divided in several groups; toxins, cell wall associated proteins, adhesins, non-protein antigens and extracellulair enzymes. Lots of animal studies are done to determine the effect of these targets as part of a vaccine. However, these studies often give contradictory results. Thus far, most positive results are obtained with cell wall associated proteins. A few vaccine targets have already been studied in human, but thus far none of them succeeded to offer sufficient protection. Further research has to determine if a vaccine against S. aureus can offer protection against infection in human. Generally it is thought that such a vaccine has to consist of multiple antigens, since S. aureus has multiple virulence factors and is very variable.

Item Type:	Thesis (Bachelor's Thesis)
Degree programme:	Biology
Thesis type:	Bachelor's Thesis
Language:	English
Date Deposited:	15 Feb 2018 07:45
Last Modified:	15 Feb 2018 07:45
URI:	https://fse.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/9571

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