Promising results for elusive gonorrhoea vaccine

Promising results for elusive gonorrhoea vaccine

Media Release
University of Auckland

A vaccine developed against meningococcal disease has been discovered to give about 30 percent protection against gonorrhoea.

The discovery was made by researchers at the University of Auckland led by Dr Helen Petousis-Harris, from the University’s Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences.

The findings were presented this week at the International Pathogenic Neisseria Conference in Manchester, England. The study has generated a great deal of interest internationally.

“This is an exciting discovery that has the potential to help combat a very common and distressing disease,” says Dr Petousis-Harris.

Gonorrhoea is a major global public health challenge. The World Health Organization estimated there were 78 million new gonorrhoea infections in 2012.

In New Zealand it is the second most reported sexually transmitted bacterial disease after chlamydia with about 3000 cases reported each year. Many cases go unreported.

Dr Jane Morgan, clinical director of Hamilton Sexual Health Clinic says “It’s a dreadful disease; left untreated, gonorrhoea can cause severe pain and reduced fertility for women”.

”Of greatest concern is that gonorrhoea has become resistant to multiple antibiotics over recent years and may soon be untreatable,” she says. “This makes the development of a gonorrhoea vaccine an essential component in reducing the burden of this nasty disease.”
Despite more than 100 years of research, vaccine development has been unsuccessful.

This latest study at the University of Auckland was inspired by data showing that gonorrhoea cases had declined in New Zealand and Cuba immediately following those countries’ Meningococcal B vaccine programmes.

A link was plausible because the two bacteria (Neisseria meningitides and Neisseria gonorrhoeae) have about 80 -90 percent of their primary DNA sequences in common.

Dr Petousis-Harris says, “While these observations were interesting they didn’t tell us if the meningococcal vaccine was responsible for the decline in gonorrhoea infections.”

“In our study we used anonymised data from sexual health clinics and the National Immunisation Registry to look at any effect of the MeNZB vaccine offered in New Zealand between 2004 and 2008 on gonorrhoea infections,” she says.

“We compared it with any effect on a different sexually transmitted disease, chlamydia, over the same time-frame. This is called a case-control study.”

University of Auckland researchers found that individuals who received the MeNZB vaccine about 10 years ago were 30 percent less likely to be diagnosed with gonorrhoea compared to those who were unvaccinated.

“This was surprising as the vaccine was very specific for a particular strain of meningococcal disease, it was not designed to protect against gonorrhoea infection,” says Dr Petousis-Harris.

“This means we now have better insights into developing a more effective gonorrhoea-specific vaccine or a vaccine that may cover both bacteria species (gonorrhoeae and meningitidis) in the Neisseria genus.”

Although the MeNZB vaccine is no longer available, a recently developed broad coverage meningococcal B vaccine (4CMenB), that has the key MeNZB ingredient in it, may well have a similar or greater protective effect due to additional components to the MeNZB component.

“Next we need to understand how the MeNZB vaccine has worked against gonorrhoea, as well as explore the potential of the new meningococcal B vaccine that is available in some countries against gonorrhoea infection” says Dr Petousis-Harris.

This research was funded by Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics AG (a member of the GlaxoSmithKline group) and sponsored by Auckland UniServices Ltd.

ENDS

© Scoop Media