Completed Infection & Immunity Pregnancy, Children & Inherited Conditions

The potential impact of vaccination on RSV and other respiratory virus pneumonia in the developing country setting.

Funder Wellcome Charity-funded
Recipient organisation University of Warwick
Funding £1.8M
Period Jul 2008 — Jun 2014

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) repeatedly infects people throughout their lives because immunity is only partial, and a new vaccine must account for how this incomplete protection shapes transmission. The problem is that current models for predicting vaccine impact do not adequately capture how partially immune individuals both limit and sustain virus spread, especially to vulnerable infants. The researchers will combine immunological, epidemiological, and theoretical studies to build transmission dynamics models for RSV and other respiratory viruses. If successful, this work will define optimal vaccine strategies—such as which age groups to prioritise and how often to vaccinate—and provide a practical framework for evaluating them in developing countries where RSV pneumonia is a major killer. This is fundamental science with a clear applied goal: better models mean better vaccine policy, which could reduce severe respiratory illness in settings where healthcare resources are scarce.

View original technical description
Predicting the potential impact of introducing a vaccine into a community requires an in-depth understanding of the interactions between the pathogen and host. Key elements of this association are the mechanism by which the virus spreads between individuals and the nature of the immune response to infection. In the case of RSV, an antigenically variable virus, individuals are repeatedly infected throughout life, and it is the nature of this partial immunity that is of central concern in our stud ies. In particular, we wish to elucidate the role of the partially immune in constraining virus spread, but, also in maintenance of transmission, especially to na ve individuals most at risk of disease, and to establish the role of individual strain specific immunity to population dynamics. We argue also that the environment of other respiratory pathogens may influence the single pathogen:host ecology. We plan an inter-related series of studies, in which immunological, epidemiological, and th eoretical investigations will feed into transmission dynamics models of RSV and other respiratory viruses, by which to assess the impact of vaccine intervention. Our goals are to define optimal vaccine strategies for disease prevention, and provide a suitable framework for their practical evaluation.

View the original record at the funder ↗

Researchers

James Nokes (EPMC Awardee)

Related Research

Grants with similar aims, by meaning.

Household transmission of respiratory viruses: who acquires infection from whom.
Changes to pathogen fitness as a result of population growth, ageing and migration
Evaluating RSV vaccine immunity amongst infants born prematurely and based on timing of maternal vaccination
Exploring the epidemiology of respiratory syncytial virus in young children in the community using sparse serological survey data
Host Determinants Associated with Susceptibility to Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) Infection

Original classification

Programme Grant

Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.