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Nasal vaccine may protect against meningitis

April 10, 2002

BENIGN bugs that live in the noses of many infants have inspired a much-needed vaccine against a deadly form of meningitis.
        Based on the bacterium Neisseria lactamica, the prototype vaccine is showing promise against group B meningococcal meningitis and septicaemia, the potentially fatal blood poisoning that often accompanies meningitis. There is no reliable vaccine against the bacteria at present.
        Britain introduced a vaccine in November 1999 against group C meningococcal meningitis-the other major form of the disease afflicting industrialised countries. "The Department of Health estimates that at least 50 lives have been saved by it," says Andy Gorringe, head of the team developing the new vaccine at the government`s Centre for Applied Microbiology and Research near Salisbury in Wiltshire.
        But there`s no suitable vaccine to combat group B meningitis, which claims around 150 lives a year in Britain. "A child can be dead within a few hours of infection," says Gorringe. "It`s a public health priority to get a vaccine."
        From preliminary experiments, Gorringe is confident that the new vaccine works against both strains. "We`ve evidence it protects against B and C," he says.
        He and his colleagues at the Public Health Laboratory Service got the idea of using N. lactamica after seeing reports that people who carry the bacterium appear to be protected against meningitis. They also knew that N. lactamica has surface features matching those on its lethal relative, N. meningitidis, and so could easily prime immunity against the disease itself.
        Even though N. lactamica lives harmlessly in the noses of 1 in 10 infants and young children, the team wanted to produce an even safer version. So their prototype vaccine is just a mixture of the bug`s coat proteins. When they injected the vaccine into the mice or sprayed it into their noses, the mice survived attacks with meningitis B and C.
        The ideal would be a nasal spray for very young infants. Gorringe and his colleagues are in talks with vaccine manufacturers to take the project further.
        Gorringe says a vaccine against meningococcus B already exists-developed at the Finlay Institute in Cuba and given to infants there since 1991. "But there`s no evidence it works in young children," says Gorringe. In experiments in 1996 on Icelandic schoolchildren with the Cuban vaccine and a similar Norwegian version, protection levels were not clear, he says.

Andy Coghlan from New Scientist reports from the GENERAL SOCIETY FOR MICROBIOLOGY MEETING in WARWICK

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Nasal vaccine may protect against meningitis

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