A step closer to gonorrhoea vaccine
PARIS: A discontinued vaccine against a bacteria that causes brain inflammation also shielded people against gonorrhoea, the first drug ever to offer such protection against the sexually transmitted disease, researchers said.
Using a condom or abstaining from sex are currently the only ways to avoid contracting gonorrhoea, which infects about 80 million people every year, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Just last week, the WHO said there was an urgent need for new drugs to prevent and treat gonorrhoea, often called “the clap”, which is spread by vaginal, oral and anal sex. Untreated, it can cause painful pelvic inflammation in women, and infertility in both genders.
The disease spreads easily because many carriers are unaware of their infection and unwittingly pass it on to new sexual partners.
For the new study, published in The Lancet yesterday, researchers looked at diagnosed gonorrhoea cases among people who would have been eligible for a meningococcal B vaccine administered to over a million New Zealanders between 2004 and 2006.
Meningococcal bacteria, spread through coughing or kissing, can cause meningitis and a blood infection called septicaemia. Both can be fatal.
While they are vastly different in symptoms and transmission, the meningitis and gonorrhoea bacteria are a very close genetic match, the researchers said.
Experts recently noticed a tantalising decline in gonorrhoea after meningococcal B vaccine campaigns.
So the team set out to investigate, and found that people who got the meningitis vaccine in New Zealand “were significantly less likely to have gonorrhoea” than people who did not get the shot.
The vaccine was estimated to have reduced gonorrhoea cases by 31%, a level that would decrease the prevalence of the disease by about a third within 15 years.
“This is the first time a vaccine has shown any protection against gonorrhoea,” said study co-author Helen Petousis-Harris of the University of Auckland in New Zealand. — AFP