IgY antibodies for the immunoprophylaxis and therapy of respiratory infections

Abbas, Aymn Talat; El-Kafrawy, Sherif Aly; Sohrab, Sayed Sartaj; Azhar, Esam Ibraheem Ahmed

In a Phase I feasibility study, CF patients were asked to gargle with an antipseudomonal IgY antibody every night after brushing their teeth. This practice prolonged the time from first to next colonization. The specific antipseudomonal IgY prophylaxis experiments showed that 4.4% of the cultures were positive for P. aeruginosa, but none of the patients became chronically colonized. However, in the control group, in which 18.7% of the cultures were positive, 5 of 21 patients became chronically colonized. 109 Another study demonstrated that oral administration of IgY against P. aeruginosa prevented pulmonary P. aeruginosa infections in patients with CF. None of the IgY-treated patients in this study became chronically colonized with P. aeruginosa, compared to 24% in the control group. No undesirable side effects were reported for the IgY treatment during the 10-year study period (Table 1) . 87 Nilsson et al 102 put 17 Swedish CFs patients on oral prophylactic therapy with IgY antibodies against P. aeruginosa for up to 12 years. During the course of the study, continuous administration of azithromycin was used in several of the patients. Only 29 cultures tested positive for P. aeruginosa (not including cultures after chronic colonization) in the antibiotic-treated group (P = 0.028). In the IgY group (n = 17), only two siblings were chronically colonized with P. aeruginosa compared to seven patients in the control group (n = 23). There was no decrease in pulmonary function or the body mass index in the IgY-treated patients. These results suggest that the combined use of IgY and antibiotics for the treatment and prophylaxis of P. aeruginosa have the potential to prevent P. aeruginosa colonization and delay or avoid chronic P. aeruginosa infection (Table 1) . From this study, Anti-Pseudomonas IgY has the possibility to be complement to antibiotics, when they are insufficient for the treatment of P. aeruginosa infections in CF lungs.