“Recurring urinary tract infections (UTIs) can be prevented for up to nine years with an oral spray vaccine, a landmark British trial has shown. Experts said the treatment was a ‘game changer’ for people suffering from continual painful infections,” which cause 150,000 hospitalizations every year in the United Kingdom alone, reports The Telegraph.
“Around half of women and 20 per cent of men suffer UTIs, which can be particularly dangerous for older people, causing irregular heartbeat, high blood pressure, and triggering potentially lethal falls,” The Telegraph says:
The death rate for hospital UTIs is four in 100, accounting for around 6,000 deaths a year. It rises to one in 10 for people aged 95 and over as it can often develop into sepsis and make dementia worse.
In a long-running trial, 89 patients were asked to spray the pineapple-flavoured vaccine under their tongue every day for three months, and then followed up for nine years by clinicians at the UK’s Royal Berkshire Hospital. Nearly half of the participants (48 per cent) remained entirely infection-free during the nine-year follow-up. The average infection-free period across the cohort was 54.7 months (four and a half years) – 56.7 months for women and 44.3 months, one year less, for men.
Dr. Bob Yang, who led the research, stated that “Before having the vaccine, all our participants suffered from recurrent UTIs, and for many women, these can be difficult to treat. Nine years after first receiving this new UTI vaccine, around half of the participants remained infection-free. Overall, this vaccine is safe in the long term and our participants reported having fewer UTIs that were less severe. Many of those who did get a UTI told us that simply drinking plenty of water was enough to treat it.” Yang is a urologist with the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust.
Currently, urinary tract infections are treated with antibiotics, but antibiotic-resistant infections have increased and antibiotics have become less effective as a result.
The vaccine, called Uromune, was developed by the Spanish drugmaker Immunotek. It contains whole bacteria of the four most common germs that cause urinary tract infections in patients of both sexes: Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Proteus vulgaris and Enterococcus Faecalis. The vaccine is licensed in Spain, but it is not yet approved for use by Britain’s National Health Service.
Recently, a treatment was discovered for sleeping sickness, a horrific disease that kills 50,000 to 500,000 people per year.
Scientists recently discovered a new antibiotic that can kill drug-resistant bacteria.
Coffee grounds may hold the secret to curing Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s diseases.
A virus is being used to cure deafness in new gene therapy. Researchers also discovered that a plant virus could be used to save crops from root-eating pests.
Scientists have come up with a vaccine that provides protection against dengue fever, also known as “breakbone fever”, about 80% of the time — at least in the short run.
Scientists have come up with a gene therapy to block the painful hereditary condition Angiodema.
In Hungary, doctors are using artificial intelligence to detect cases of breast cancer more effectively, enabling them to remove such cancers before they can metastasize and kill women. A new ultrasound therapy could help treat cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.
