Effectiveness of early introduction of ten-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV-10) on reducing pneumococcal bacterial load in the nasopharynx among neonates.

2019 Fiscal Year Research-status Report

• Project/Area Number: 17K16272
• Research Institution: Nagasaki University
• Principal Investigator: ドバデル ビム 長崎大学, 熱帯医学・グローバルヘルス研究科, 助教 (80761113)
• Project Period (FY): 2017-04-01 – 2021-03-31
• Keywords: pneumococcus / serotypes / PCV10 / children / pneumonia

Outline of Annual Research Achievements

After getting ethical approvals from Nepal Health Research Council (NHRC) and the School of Tropical Medicine and Global Health (TMGH), we have started the research by enrolling babies at six weeks of age and taking their nasopharyngeal samples. This is a longitudinal cohort study. We plan to follow these babies at 9 and 12 months of age to take samples and see the changes in vaccine and non-vaccine serotypes of pneumococcus. The babies receive 10-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCV10) at 6 weeks, 10 weeks, and 9 months of age. We will try to compare the pneumococcal serotype profile before and after PCV10 vaccines and analyse their associations with the acute respiratory infections in the children. We have enrolled 84 babies in this study till date.

Current Status of Research Progress

3: Progress in research has been slightly delayed.

Reason

First delay was due to the ethical approval process as this research involves the taking of human specimens and I had to clarify some points to the ethical board to transport DNA samples from Nepal to Japan. Therefore, the ethical clearance was delayed.

We started the project by enrolling babies in February 2020, but because of Covid-19 the Government of Nepal has enforced country-wide lockdown from 24 March 2020 to till 2 June 2020. It is expected that the Government may extend the lockdown period. During this period, movement of people is restricted except for very essential or emergency conditions; for this reason the project is slightly delayed.

Strategy for Future Research Activity

We will continue the enrollment of children. We will extract the DNA from the nasopharyngeal samples. By March, we will finish data cleaning, data analysis, and report preparation.

Causes of Carryover

Due to the delay in obtaining ethical approvals and the start of the project as well as the outbreak of Covid-19, the budget could not be used for the data analysis and the publication in 2019 FY. We will be using the remaining budget in 2020 FY for these purposes.