In developing countries, young children experience on average three episodes of diarrhea every year. Each episode deprives the child of the nutrition necessary for growth. As a result, diarrhea is a major cause of malnutrition, and malnourished children are more likely to fall ill from diarrhea. Diarrhea kills almost 500,000 kids under the age of five every year. Rotavirus and E. coli are the two most common etiological agents of diarrhea in developing countries. Hyper-Egg polyclonal antibody therapy is proven effective in treating diarrhea in animals. We are confident this same therapy will be successful, economical and sustainable in treating diarrhea in children in less developed countries. Furthermore as malnutrition is a complicating factor, the treatment, delivered in a spray dried whole egg, will also be highly nutritious with zero side effects.
Another harmful pathogen to children in less developed countries is the parasite, Cryptosporidium. We have recently been working on a research project titled: Development of Safe and Effective Immunotherapy for Childhood Cryptosporidiosis. We demonstrated the effectiveness of orally-administered egg-derived polyclonal antibody-vaccine targeted to Cryptosporidium parvum, which significantly reduced the disease burden, parasite-load and improved the survival time in a C. parvum – infected disease mice model.