“Vaccination to reduce antimicrobial resistance”
“With the pipeline of new antibiotics running dry, vaccines are being proposed as a key part of the toolkit used to fight antimicrobial resistance.
Amy Ginsburg and Keith Klugman (November 2017, e1176–77)2 suggest that a reduction in resistant pathogens might be easier to achieve in many countries via vaccines than through other interventions, such as improved hygiene and sanitation. However, vaccines are rarely designed to target resistant pathogens directly, with the notable exception of pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCVs) that protect against serotypes of Streptococcus pneumoniae displaying high resistance frequency.
Hence, vaccines’ effect of reducing antimicrobial resistance has been mostly regarded as a highly desirable byproduct. The scale of the problem of antimicrobial resistance now requires us to formally integrate the effect of vaccines on antimicrobial resistance into decision-making in public health.”
Source: The Lancet Global Health
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