Researchers at the University of Surrey recently announced they had created a strain of meningitis B that cannot cause the often-deadly symptoms of the disease and thus could eventually lead to the development of a vaccine against the disease.
Currently, there are viable vaccines for both A and C strains of meningitis but not the B strain. Moreover meningitis is a major problem in developing countries because vaccines for the separate A and C strains of the disease are relatively expensive.
The new finding could kill both problems at once — after injecting mice with the strain of meningitis B, they found that the immune system of the animals created antibodies for all three major strains of the disease. A single vaccine that could provide immunity to all three strains would be a major development in efforts to reduce meningitis cases around the world.
The researchers who announced this discovery emphasized that their genetically engineered strain of meningitis B is not a vaccine yet. Dr. Johnjoe McFadden, lead researcher on the project, told BBC News Online,
At the moment, it isn’t a vaccine. What we need to do is identify the proteins in this strain that cause this cross reaction. We hope we will be able to complete this work within three years. However, we need additional funding if we are to press ahead with this work. At the moment, we don’t have funding to take this research forward.
This advance was made possible thanks to the sequencing of N. meningitidis in 2000.
Sources:
Improved meningitis vaccine ready ‘within a decade’. The Guardian, Stewart Maclean, January 5, 2004
Hope For New Meningitis Vaccine. Medica.De, January 5, 2004.
Vaccine ‘could beat meningitis’. The BBC, January 6, 2004.