Positive data on Hepatitis E vaccine research

Regular readers are aware of our discomfort about reporting on news of vaccines years away from licensure, at best. But when the New England Journal of Medicine decides to include results of Phase I or II clinical trials, it's generally worth noting.

That's the case for the most recent issue of NEJM, which published a paper on the "Safety and Efficacy of a Recombinant Hepatitis E Vaccine." Hepatitis E, more information about which can be found here and here, is quite rare in the United States and is not known to cause chronic conditions. Far more common, of course, are hepatitis A, B, and C (with vaccines available for the first two). Hep E does, however, lead to outbreaks in many parts of the world, particularly in Asia.

The trial reported on here included nearly 1800 volunteers from the Army of Nepal, a population at high risk of contracting the virus. The result: the candidate vaccine's efficacy was 95.5%. No serious safety concerns were identified.

Included in the same issue of NEJM was an editorial titled "Hepatitis E Vaccine -- Ready for Prime Time?"