24,000 teenagers will trial breakthrough meningitis jabs

 The NHS aims to recruit 24,000 teenagers to test the first new vaccines for adolescents against the most common form of meningitis.

Scientists believe that the two new candidate drugs, developed after recent breakthroughs, will offer near total protection from meningitis B.

By testing them on such a large cohort – to be recruited through schools in 14 towns and cities – they want to establish if the drugs are capable of preventing the spread of the potentially deadly bacteria from protected to unprotected teenagers, building “herd immunisation”.

While vaccines for other forms of the disease exist for teenagers, there are none against meningitis B.

Two-thirds of the 16 to 18-year-olds in the study will receive two doses of one of the new vaccines – 8,000 will receive the 4CMENB (Bexsero), with the same number taking Menb-fhbp (Trumbenba). A further 8,000 will act as a control.