Typhoid vax can protect entire neighborhoods

A new study demonstrated that GlaxoSmithKline's Typherix vaccine was effective at preventing typhoid in children as young as two and that widespread vaccination campaigns targeting threatened neighborhoods can help protect an entire community.

To test its effectiveness, researchers inoculated almost 40,000 children and adults living in an Indian slum with either Typherix or Glaxo's hepatitis A vaccine Havrix. Under the age of five, the protection rate was nearly 80 percent. At 5 to 14 the rate of protection was 56 percent, with 46 percent of those over the age of 15 gaining immunity. And the jab also helped protected adults who weren't inoculated. Researchers said that the umbrella community campaign significantly reduced the overall rate of infection, providing added safety for everyone living in the neighborhood.

"This protection for children under the age of 5 years is important because this age group has been shown to be at high risk for typhoid fever in many areas where the disease is endemic," the researchers wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine.

- read the report from Reuters