Leukocyte transcript alterations in West-African girls following a booster vaccination with diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine.

Background: Observational studies from low-income countries have shown that the vaccination against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP) is associated with excess female mortality due to infectious diseases.

Methods: To investigate possible changes in gene expression after DTP vaccination, we identified a group of nine comparable West African girls, from a biobank of 356 children, who were due to receive DTP booster vaccine at age 18 months. As a pilot experiment we extracted RNA from blood samples before, and 6 weeks after, vaccination to analyze the coding transcriptome in leukocytes using expression microarrays, and ended up with information from eight girls.