Phase -2 Of Meningitis B Vaccine Trials Brings Positive Results

A ray of hope came in when scientists involved in the ongoing trials for developing a vaccine for meningitis B, announced that second stage trials for the vaccine have been successful in babies. The trails conducted on 150 babies in the US have generated positive results, encouraging the doctors to move on to large scale trials now

Meningitis B, caused by a bacterial strain, which had so far eluded all medical efforts to curb it, has finally shown signs of being tamed, as disclosed by doctors of the Swiss company – Novartis. They had been working on this for quite some time now.

"The prospect of one vaccine that protects infants worldwide against meningococcal serogroup B would be a key achievement in global disease prevention of our time," said Dr Ray Borrow, head of the vaccine evaluation department at Manchester Royal Infirmary, who helped organize the study, which took place in the UK.

Although effective vaccination for meningitis C is available today and other strains of meningitis can be tackled by Hib and pneumococcal medicine, meningitis B remains unconquered yet.

It is a deadly disease requiring immediate medical attention as, this condition involving inflammation of the brain and spinal cord can prove to be fatal if not responded to immediately.

Early symptoms of the disease include rash on the body which refuses to disappear when the skin is pressed with a glass. The condition worsens within 24 hours if untreated and may result in the death of the patient.

The research involved, injecting the babies with the new vaccine at two, four and six months of age, with a booster at 12 months. Blood samples were taken a month after the third dose and again a month after the booster dose. Antibodies found in the blood, confirmed the children had developed good immune responses against certain strains of meningitis B bacteria.
The third phase of the research would involve studying more cases to find out if the vaccine protects in real life when babies are in contact with the disease and also if it fights more strains of meningitis B or only those included specifically.

"The problem with producing a vaccine against meningitis B is that there are so many different strains," said Dr Andrew Pollard, head of the Oxford Vaccine Group at the University of Oxford, who helped run the study. "These initial results show that the vaccine induces an immune response against strains containing the vaccine components. The next step is to find how broad these responses are against other strains. There is still a long way to go, but a vaccine that gave broad protection against meningitis B would be hugely significant."

There are around a 1000 cases of meningitis B in the UK every year out of which 10% end in death while 20% suffer some or the other damage.