A Study of the Efficacy of Typhoid Vaccine in Inducing Humoral and Cell-mediated Immune Responses in Human Volunteers

The nature of protective immunity against typhoid fever in man is not at present well understood. Work on animal models and earlier studies from this laboratory indicate an important protective role for cellular immunity. The present work attempts to study the efficacy of the conventional typhoid vaccine in inducing specific cellular and humoral immune responses. The study on fifty-eight new army recruits and thirty-one civilian volunteers showed adequate humoral responses after vaccination. However, vaccination failed to induce a significant cellular immune response. In addition, a transient suppression of cellular immunity was observed in the immediate post-vaccination period in ten subjects who possessed natural cellular immunity before vaccination. These findings indicate the need for improving the typhoid vaccine so that it will induce cellular immunity as well as a humoral response. It also points to the necessity for obtaining detailed knowledge of the post-vaccination anergy as it could be important in timing public health programmes.