A candidate vaccine induced a broad antibody response to a wide range of norovirus strains, according to a study in PLOS Medicine, meaning that a norovirus vaccine could be available in the future.
Noroviruses cause one in five cases of viral gastroenteritis worldwide, and of the 300 million cases of norovirus infection annually, 260,000 people die.
Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that a vaccine using virus-like particles can elicit antibody responses to a wide range of vaccine and non-vaccine virus-like particles.
This means that norovirus immunity from a virus-like particles vaccine could overcome the ability of noroviruses to evade immunity by antigenic drift.
"These data reveal new information about complex norovirus immune responses to both natural exposure and to vaccination, and support the potential feasibility of an efficacious multivalent norovirus VLP vaccine for future use in human populations," the study authors wrote.