The search for an efficacious shigella vaccine

Abstract

Controversy surrounds the ranking by clinical importance of diarrhoeal disease pathogens. These perceived differences are likely to be due to real differences in agent pathophysiology but also to differences in diarrhoea disease models and epidemiology study designs.1,2 Regardless of this controversy, over the last decade, shigella-associated diarrhoea and dysentery have been consistently shown to be of significant clinical importance in children, adolescents, and adults in low-income countries,3 in children in day-care centres of developed countries,4 in military personnel and travellers to endemic areas,5 and among men who have sex with men.