A rapid saliva test to assess protection against disease and monitor vaccination in low-middle income countries

快速唾液测试，用于评估中低收入国家的疾病保护并监测疫苗接种情况

• 批准号: MR/Y019318/1
• 负责人: Jennifer Heaney
• 金额: $ 142.65万
• 依托单位: University of Birmingham
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2024 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=MR%2FY019318%2F1
• 关键词: rapid; saliva; test; assess; protection

Live saving childhood vaccinations fail to reach ~25 million children worldwide. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people across the world have missed out on essential vaccines, increasing those at risk of serious disease. Tetanus is a bacterial infection with a high death rate but is preventable with vaccination. Tetanus is one of the key vaccines given routinely but the amount of people receiving this vaccine has slipped back to lower levels seen many years ago. Eliminating tetanus has been an aim for over 20 years. This has been achieved in many countries but in low-middle income countries this disease is still a problem and continues to cause unnecessary deaths every year. It is important to monitor vaccination and understand how many people are protected against disease, but this can be challenging to do directly. Having information on immunity (protection from disease) is helpful to understand how well vaccination plans are working and help find individuals who are unprotected and need vaccination. However, testing immunity currently requires blood samples. Testing immunity in blood can be expensive and some countries are unable to do it. Also, not everyone wishes to have blood taken and taking blood from children is not desirable. We will develop a low-cost test that enables immunity to be tested easily, quickly, and without taking blood. The test uses saliva and is a lateral flow test, a type of test which is now well known to the public. The test shows if a person is/is not protected against tetanus within 15 minutes. If a person is unprotected against tetanus, they are also likely missing protection against other serious diseases and have not received all recommended vaccinations. The test can be used anywhere (outreach, community, clinic, hospital) and can improve access to immunity testing for those who currently are unable to do so. In this project we will develop our saliva test with help from an expert company. We will spend time trying various materials and ways to build the test to get the best invention. We are aiming to use as little plastic as possible in our test. We will also find out the easiest way to collect saliva to run the test. Then we will run lots of saliva samples on our test in a laboratory to check how well the test works. If the test works as well, it will then be sent to be included in a study in Malawi (a low-income country in Africa). In this study, we will see how well our test works in real-life and find out how suitable local people find the test. If successful, after the project we intend to try out the test in other countries to measure immunity among different communities, to improve vaccination monitoring and planning.

拯救儿童疫苗接种量未能达到全球约2500万儿童。由于Covid-19的大流行，全世界许多人都错过了基本疫苗，增加了患有严重疾病的风险的疫苗。破伤风是一种细菌感染，死亡率很高，但可以通过疫苗接种来预防。破伤风是通常给出的关键疫苗之一，但是接收这种疫苗的人数已降至多年前的较低水平。消除破伤风已经成为20多年的目标。这在许多国家已经实现了，但是在低中收入国家，这种疾病仍然是一个问题，并且每年继续造成不必要的死亡。监测疫苗并了解有多少人受到保护疾病很重要，但这可能直接挑战。了解免疫力（免受疾病的保护）有助于了解疫苗接种计划的工作状况，并有助于找到未受保护并需要疫苗接种的人。但是，当前测试免疫力需要血液样本。血液中的免疫力可能很昂贵，有些国家无法做到这一点。另外，并不是每个人都希望获得血液，并从孩子那里吸血是不可取的。我们将开发一项低成本测试，使免疫力可以轻松，快速地进行测试，而无需接受血液。该测试使用唾液，是一种横向流程测试，这是一种现在是公众众所周知的测试。该测试表明，一个人是否在15分钟内不受破伤风保护。如果一个人对破伤风受到保护，他们也可能会缺少针对其他严重疾病的保护，并且没有接受所有建议的疫苗接种。该测试可以在任何地方（外展，社区，诊所，医院）使用，并可以改善目前无法进行的免疫测试。在这个项目中，我们将在专家公司的帮助下开发唾液测试。我们将花时间尝试各种材料和方法来建立测试以获得最佳发明。我们的目标是在测试中使用尽可能少的塑料。我们还将找到收集唾液进行测试的最简单方法。然后，我们将在测试中在实验室中运行大量唾液样本，以检查测试的效果。如果测试也有效，那么它将被送入马拉维（非洲低收入国家）的一项研究中。在这项研究中，我们将看到我们的测试在现实生活中的表现如何，并找出当地人如何找到测试。如果成功的话，在项目之后，我们打算在其他国家尝试测试，以衡量不同社区之间的免疫力，以改善疫苗接种监测和计划。