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Vaccine from baker's yeast is effective against fungal diseases
Medical expert of the article
Last reviewed: 16.10.2021
The vaccine from baker's yeast is effective against a number of fungal infectious diseases, including aspergillosis and coccidioidosis.
Aspergillus mushrooms, which form, for example, black mold on walls in a damp room, in some cases can cause severe fungal disease - aspergillosis. Usually it develops in people with a weakened immune system, penetrating the body through the mouth and hitting the lungs. Lungs, however, the matter is not limited, the fungus can send its spores to the kidneys, liver and brain. If aspergillosis has gained strength, most often this means a fatal outcome; more or less effective therapy against it does not exist.
Scientists from the California Institute of Medical Research, along with colleagues from Stanford (both US) came across an amazing way to vaccinate against aspergillosis, reported in an article in the Journal of Medical Microbiology. It turned out that if mice were injected with dead cells of ordinary baker's yeast, the animals were able to survive the extensive infection with aspergillus, and the degree of infection with the harmful fungus of internal organs decreased.
Along with normal yeast, scientists also injected modified yeast cells into mice that carried aspergillus surface proteins with them. But there was no difference in efficacy with normal yeast, from which the researchers concluded that the "strength of the vaccine" is contained in some component of the yeast cell wall.
Moreover, the yeast preparation showed itself perfectly in the fight against three more fungal pathogens that cause candidiasis, cryptococcosis and coccidioidosis. Perhaps baker's yeast can protect people for whom fungal infections represent a real danger (let us recall at least cancer patients with weakened immunity).