Apreventive anti leprosy vaccine can contribute considerably towards global
control and even elimination of leprosy. However, there is no successful vaccine
available as yet. M.leprae is known to evade/subvert the antimicrobial activity
of the invaded antigen presenting cells (APCs; macrophages and dendritic
cells). Therefore, the cause for failure towards developing anti leprosy
vaccine could be lack of presentation of M leprae antigens to re-stimulate the
candidate vaccine generated CD4+Th1 type of memory cells against M.leprae.
Since, autophagy is known to kill M.leprae and present its antigens,
intermittent induction of autophagy might help in improving vaccine efficacy by
re-stimulation of vaccine induced memory cells and thereby persistence of
vaccine generated immunity. On the other hand, T cell subsets other than
CD4+Th1 are also known to be protective in leprosy. A strategy involving such
immune cells towards formulating anti leprosy vaccine may also prove to be
advantageous. Hence, investigations on these aforementioned approaches are
worthwhile exploring.
Leprosy
is a chronic contagious disease caused by infection with Mycobacterium leprae
(M.leprae), an obligate intracellular microbe which harbours, primarily,
macrophages and Schwann cells. During this disease, mainly, skin and nerves are
affected where immunological complications can result in nerve damage and thereby
neuropathy leading to disabilities. Over the years, despite remarkable global
decrease in leprosy cases the new case detection rates have not changed much.
The data from 106 countries documented occurrence of 210758 new cases during
2015. Of these, 22 countries have been reported to be high burdened. Though
Multi Drug Therapy (MDT) has brought down the global number of leprosy
patients, persistence of new cases could be due to limitations of MDT and/or
due to prevalence of undetected leprosy cases.
The
existing scenario points-out that leprosy infection is still going on in
community and for many countries it is still an important public health
problem. Though, leprosy has been controlled significantly; nevertheless, its
further control and finally, elimination can be boosted by anti M.leprae
vaccine. As yet, no efficient anti leprosy vaccine is available for its use for
prevention of occurrence of leprosy. Hence, efforts towards searching better
vaccine are underway in several laboratories. Through this communication, an
attempt has been made to share views to further refine research on developing
anti leprosy vaccine.
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