Q fever prevention and vaccination.

The simpliest way how to avoid the development and spreading of any infection, including Q fever in extenso, is prevention. The main principles of prevention are: educate the public on sources of infection, appropriately dispose of placenta, birth products, fetal membranes, and aborted fetuses at facilities housing sheep and goats, restrict access to barns and laboratories used in housing potentially infected animals, use only pasteurized milk and milk products, use appropriate procedures for bagging, autoclaving, and washing of laboratory clothing, quarantine imported animals, periodical monitoring of seroprevalence in cattle, sheeps and goats, vaccination of the risk groups etc. Four different basic types of Q fever vaccines have been developed: 1) live attenuated vaccines were derived from the Coxiella burnetii strain Grita in phase I of a highly reduced virulence but preserved immunogenicity, 2) highly purified corpuscular formalin-inactivated vaccine derived from the C. burnetii Henzerling strain in phase I, 3) a soluble vaccine prepared from the C. burnetii strain Nine Mile corpuscules in phase I by extraction with trichloracetic acid, and 4) in the USA, the use of a chloroform-methanol extraction residue subunit vaccine of C. burnetii strain Nine Mile in phase I of a low reactogenicity has been recommended.