Shigella bacteria cause dangerous bacterial dysentery, which kills around 600 people worldwide every year. people. No wonder that scientists are trying to create an effective vaccine to protect people against this infection. One of the people who agreed to participate in the research and have a shigella cocktail was Jake Eberts. The man documented the development of the infection on Twitter.
- Jake Eberts participated in research on the dysentery vaccine and contracted it after drinking a shigella cocktail
- He reported his health on Twitter. He survived the infection hard. He confessed that he had dreams during his illness. After he recovered, he began collecting money for countries at risk of this serious disease
- Dr. Wilbur Chen, who is responsible for the research in the United States, admitted that the vaccine will be considered good if it turns out to show more than 70 percent of the vaccine. effectiveness
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Jake Eberts drank a shigella cocktail while participating in a dysentery vaccine test. Shigellosis (bacterial dysentery), which affects 80 to 165 million people worldwide each year, mainly in temperate or tropical climates, causes gastroenteritis, bloody, watery or mucilaginous diarrhea, fever, nausea and stomach cramps. The infection occurs through the faecal-oral route, most often through the consumption of contaminated water and food, through contact with surfaces with bacteria or through sexual contact.
Research on the development of a vaccine against dysentery is currently carried out in France and the USA, where it is tested on volunteers. They are the ones who are ready to accept a smoothie cocktail containing shigella bacteria for a fee (from $ 3 to $ 150). Some of the volunteers receive the real vaccine. Others are given a placebo, so they suffer from diarrhea for several days (their health is closely monitored by medics).
The aforementioned Jake Eberts, who participated in the University of Maryland School of Medicine study, probably fell into the second group. He had a hard time getting infected.
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Before taking his shigella cocktail, Eberts had received two injections at monthly intervals, but he didn’t know if it was a vaccine or a placebo. For the first few days after drinking this unusual cocktail, Eberts felt fine, but on the fifth he woke up late at night with strong cramps, chills and increased temperature. Later it only got worse. The man described his condition on Twitter:
I went to the bathroom and every part of the process – getting up, walking, grabbing toilet paper – was like a Herculean effort. I was so exhausted that I just lay down on the bathroom floor for a few minutes. I thought it was 15-20 mins, but I was slightly conscious at best so I really have no idea (how long it took). The nurses quickly realized there was a problem and waited for me outside the bathroom. Dr. Chen walked in quickly and they started treating me.
After Eberts discovered he had dysentery, he was given antibiotics to slowly recover from his full strength. As he emphasized in one of the entries, dysentery has made him lose so much energy and feel exhausted that he does not know how young children who have weaker organisms manage to survive similar attacks of the disease.
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Based on his experience, Eberts said that he certainly did not receive a vaccine, but a placebo and, concerned about the well-being of children, began raising money for the development of sanitation in developing countries.
Dr Wilbur Chen, who leads the study, hopes his team’s vaccine against dysentery will be 70 percent. effectiveness. However, if studies show that its effectiveness is less than 50%, it will have to admit failure.