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iamamuttonhead t1_jdncssq wrote

Reply to comment by masshiker in Why does tetanus vaccination lasts longer than influenza vaccination? by E-C-A

A vaccination can be for anything for which you want to "prime" the immune system. Priming means exposing the immune system to something which will produce a condition where the immune system can respond more quickly when it encounters that something again. In theory, we could get vaccinated against fungi as well but given that they are evolutionary far closer to animals than are bacteria or viruses requiring the vaccine efforts to focus on specific differences (e.g. cell wall sugars in fungi). Even so, there may be problems with, for instance, creating food allergies (we eat a lot fo fungi and fungi are close to plants evolutionarily).

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h3rbi74 t1_jdofci1 wrote

There have been antifungal veterinary vaccines for a long time (specifically targeting “ringworm”) but their efficacy was debatable so they are no longer widely used in the US, but are still used in some parts of the world and for some industrially farmed animals instead of pets. I am old enough to remember the pharmaceutical reps hyping it up for cats (because it is a PAIN to treat/eliminate in an animal that does NOT want to take repeated medicated baths or even moreso the old fashioned lime-sulfur dips!) but nothing much ever came of it and it just quietly disappeared.

Scroll down for brief discussion of fungal veterinary vaccines: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7348621/

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iamamuttonhead t1_jdogsb9 wrote

The one vaccine you mentioned. This vaccine (or the versions that work) uses the approach of live attenuated fungus which may face regulatory hurdles in humans.

The live attenuated approach is being used in this not-yet-approved one:

https://www.aaha.org/publications/newstat/articles/2023-1/lessons-from-horticulture-pioneering-the-first-antifungal-vaccine/

I believe, though, that at least in the U.S. there is not a single approved anti-fungal vaccine for humans.

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h3rbi74 t1_jdqxx3q wrote

Very excited to see if the Valley Fever vaccine is successful! Especially because if it is, one can hope that vaccines against blastomycosis and histoplasmosis aren’t far behind, and that’s what I’m more likely to see where I currently live. (Also advancing science and human medicine and etc, but dogs with systemic fungal disease are so sad and challenging to treat!)

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