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Therapeutic Vaccine against Streptococcus sobrinus-induced Caries

¹ Laboratory of Immunology, ICBAS-Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas de Abel Salazar, Lg. Prof. Abel Salazar 2, 4099-003 Porto,
² Instituto de Biologia Molecular e Celular, Porto,
³ Faculdade de Medicina de Coimbra-Hospitais da Universidade de Coimbra, and
⁴ Faculdade de Medicina de Coimbra (Instituto de Patologia Experimental), Coimbra, Portugal;
⁵ authors contributing equally to this work;

^* corresponding author, pauferr{at}icbas.up.pt

Streptococcus sobrinus produces a virulence-associated immunomodulatory protein (VIP) which suppresses the host-specific immune response and induces the early production of IL-10. In this study, we evaluated the effects of therapeutic immunization with this VIP on the incidence of caries in S. sobrinus-infected rats. Groups of Wistar rats were orally infected with S. sobrinus and fed with sucrose-sweetened drinking water ad libitum. Five days later, rats were immunized intranasally with active or heat-inactivated VIP plus alum as adjuvant or PBS plus adjuvant (sham-immunized). After 3 wks, all rats were re-immunized as above. Evaluation of dental caries showed that VIP-immunized animals had significantly fewer enamel sulcal and proximal caries lesions than did the sham-immunized animals (p < 0.001). The protective effects following therapeutic VIP immunization were attributed to the induced salivary immunoglobulin A specific to the VIP. These results offer a promising and safe strategy for the development of a vaccine against dental caries.

KEY WORDS: Streptococcus sobrinus • dental caries • vaccination • VIP

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