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BIV Magazines: LifeSciences 2008 Fighting Infections: Shield from harm B.C.’s disease control experts are delivering a newly discovered vaccine that protects young girls from HPV and, it’s hoped, cervical cancer By Jan-Christian Sorensen While globalization has helped bring far-flung nations and economies to B.C.’s front door, it has also left that door wide open to any number of new or emerging infectious diseases. Charged with keeping a close watch on exactly what passes through the Asia-Pacific portal is the province’s first line of defence: the B.C. Centre for Disease Control in Vancouver. “I think the issue of greatest concern is the threat that infectious diseases in one part of the world can present to all the other parts of the world now,” said Dr. Robert Brunham, director of the UBC Centre for Disease Control (UBC CDC) – the state-of-the-art applied-research arm of the B.C. Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC). “It’s really based on the notion that it’s not possible now to be a healthy country in a sick world. We really are all in the same boat.” Brunham, who has been at the helm of the UBC CDC since it was first established as a centre of excellence in the area of public health communicable disease control in 1999, cites the AIDS epidemic as an example of the dual properties of globalization. On one hand, international integration fuelled the proliferation of the disease from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe, Asia and North America. On the other, says Brunham, globalization also increases our understanding of why and how viruses such as AIDS spread, which may, in turn, help researchers crack the genetic codes of other emerging infectious diseases such as pandemic influenza, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Ebola, among others. Globalization has introduced B.C. to at least one deadly new disease once endemic to tropical and subtropical climes – Cryptococcus gattii. Cryptococcus gattii, a yeast-like fungus which emigrated from Australia to B.C. and Washington State in 1999, attacks both humans and animals, causing potentially fatal lung infections and meningitis. Since the organism was first detected on the southeast coast of Vancouver Island, it has infected more than 200 people in British Columbia, killing eight. Like many of his colleagues in the local and international scientific communities, Brunham suspects that global warming may be playing a key role in the spread of the fungi to North America. “Cryptococcus gattii, we are beginning to understand, is a pathogen found primarily in Queensland, Australia. About 10 years ago, it was imported – probably on plants – to this part of the world, and it was able to make a transfer from those native plants to our indigenous plants here. “One of the real intense research questions we have is: ‘Is this a signal [of] climate change and global warming? Is the natural environment now warmer than it was several decades ago, and has that allowed this fungus to take root in the warmest part of Canada here on the southwest coast of B.C. and the southeast coast of Vancouver Island?’” In recent years, the BCCDC has helped the B.C. scientific community garner international attention for its key role in the sequencing of the SARS and avian influenza viral genomes, and in developing a SARS vaccine. The BCCDC, which reports to the Provincial Health Services Authority, is also responsible for the development, implementation and evaluation of policies and programs to educate the public on communicable disease prevention and control. “I think B.C. has done something really remarkable in terms of creating the BCCDC,” added Brunham. “At the time it was created, it was the only [centre of its type] in Canada and it has really demonstrated its worth to the province – and to the rest of Canada.” One of the benefits the BCCDC provides is the delivery of the newly discovered vaccine to shield young girls from human papillomavirus (HPV), which is closely associated with the development of cervical cancer. Brunham, whose work involves the study of the immunoepidemiology of another sexually transmitted disease – Chlamydia trachomatis – and the creation of an associated vaccine, says the HPV vaccine is a big-scale breakthrough. “We’re recognizing the impact of infectious diseases that we didn’t know had an infectious cause previously, and that’s where HPV and its relationship to cervical cancer comes in,” said Brunham, who was awarded the American Sexually Transmitted Disease Association’s Thomas Parran Award for long and distinguished contributions to the field of STD prevention and research in 2004. “I think it’s a real blessing that we now have a vaccine that school-aged girls can receive which will give them long-term protection against that virus and the cancer it may cause.” And despite fears that globalization could spark a potential repeat of the 1918-’20 “Spanish Flu” pandemic that killed an estimated 50,000 Canadians, Brunham believes that the BCCDC, provincial medical community and public at large today are all much better informed – and prepared – to negotiate potential health threats. “We clearly have more knowledge and more tools at our disposal – things like anti-viral drugs and antibiotics for complicating infections – but we also understand much more about how diseases like influenza spread from person to person, and within communities, and can make sensible recommendations on how to lessen the spread of that virus at the various institutions that are found in those communities.” • |
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