Introduction of the 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine in an isolated pneumococcal vaccine-naïve indigenous population.

Abstract

The introduction of pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCVs) has the greatest impact in populations that are most affected by pneumococcal carriage and disease, such as indigenous children [1]. Although ∼10% of the South American population consists of indigenous people living in remote settings, to our knowledge PCVs have not been evaluated in native South American children. The Warao people are an Amerindian population residing in wooden houses along the Orinoco River delta in Venezuela. Almost one-third of Warao children die during childhood and respiratory tract infections are a major cause of death [2]. This study is the first to evaluate the impact of 13-valent (PCV13) vaccination on nasopharyngeal colonisation rates and antibody response in PCV-naive indigenous South American children. PCV13 catch-up regimens for children aged ≥ 24 months may need to include more than one vaccine dose The authors thank the participating families and the field workers involved in the recruitment and sampling of children, in particular the medical students of the Escuela de Medicina Jose Maria Vargas of the Universidad Central de Venezuela and Thor Kuchler, Marcella Overeem and Stephan Kraai (Laboratorio de Tuberculosis, Instituto de Biomedicina, Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas, Venezuela and Laboratory of Paediatric Infectious Diseases, Dept of Paediatrics, Radboud Institute for Molecular Life Sciences, Radboud University Medical Centre, Nijmegen, the Netherlands). Furthermore, we thank Jochem Burghouts (Laboratorio de Tuberculosis, Instituto de Biomedicina, Universidad Central de Venezuela and Laboratory of Paediatric Infectious Diseases, Dept of Paediatrics, Radboud Institute for Molecular Life Sciences) for facilitation of study logistics. At the RIVM (National Institute for Health and Environment, Bilthoven, the Netherlands), we thank Irina Tcherniaeva for technical support. We are grateful to the personnel of the Laboratorio de Tuberculosis, Instituto de Biomedicina (Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas, Venezuela), and we acknowledge Rogier Donders (Dept of Health Evidence, Radboud University Medical Centre) for statistics support.