The Role of Humoral Immunity against Vaginal Candida Infection

Candida is essentially an extracellular organism and, as such, Abs against critical antigens for virulence are expected to play a role. This has been dismissed in the light of evidence that cell-mediated immune dysfunctions favor candidiasis. However, this does not exclude any additional or even replacing role of Abs in defined settings. There is now clear experimental evidence that some Abs may indeed be therapeutic; the experiments also suggest that under natural conditions, protective Abs may be obscured by the plethora of irrelevant if not disease-enhancing Abs. The time has now come that not only have Abs been shown to play more than a likely protective role against vaginitis, more importantly, these Abs or their engineered fragments should be used therapeutically. Our findings with protective Abs at the vaginal level may constitute the basis for such a clinical development.