Maternal vaccines

Acute lower respiratory illness (LRI) is the leading cause of disease world wide as measured by disability-adjusted life years. New strategies are nece ssary to decrease the disease burden that is largely borne by infants. Resp iratory syncytial virus is the most important cause of LRI in infants. Lowe r respiratory illness can be prevented by endowing infants with high levels of neutralizing antibodies from mothers whose antibodies are boosted durin g pregnancy with a potent subunit vaccine. Another important cause of infan t mortality is group B streptococcus sepsis in the neonatal period; materna l immunization with a group B conjugate vaccine could prevent this devastat ing infection.