was hope after all. Here is that
story.
Epidemiological evidence from
Cuba,
Brazil,
and
NZ
demonstrated
that
meningococcal group B OMV
vaccines can provide broad
protection
against
meningococcal disease (Harder,
Koch,
Wichmann,
&
Hellenbrand, 2017). This led to
the hypothesis that they may
affect a more distantly related
bacteria. Eyeball observation of
graphed surveillance data make
clear
that
incidence
of
gonorrhoea declined markedly
in
Cuba
following
implementation
of
their
meningococcal OMV vaccine
(VA-MENGOC-BC®). This was in
contrast to syphilis and genital
warts which remained the
same(Pérez et al., 2009). A
double peak and a lag before
the decline can be observed in
graphs which coincides with the
mass catch up campaign and
then the age of sexual onset in
birth cohort (Pérez et al., 2009).
Inspection of the reported
gonorrhoea in NZ shows a
decline during and after use of
MeNZB™ before climbing again.
No other sexually transmitted
infections (STIs) reported in the
NZ national surveillance reports
September 2017 L.O.G.I.C
Figure 1. Gonorrhoea rates in selected regions 1990-2014(The
Institute of Environmental Science and Research Ltd, 2015)
declined during this period.
These ‘eyeball’ observations
suggest that it is at least
possible these OMV vaccines
offered cross protection against
gonorrhoea (The Institute of
Environmental Science and
Research Ltd, 2015).
One of the legacies of the
MeNZB™ programme is the
National Immunisation Register
(NIR). Every dose of MeNZB™
vaccine has been recorded in
that database. This tool, along
with the National Health Index
Number that each New
Zealander has, allowed the
vaccine status of gonorrhoea
cases to be verified. This
provided us the opportunity to
conduct two studies to see if
MeNZB™ vaccine reduced the
risk of getting gonorrhoea.
The first study was a
retrospective case-control study
that examined the records from
nearly 15,000 visitors to 11
Sexual Health Clinics across NZ
who were eligible to have
received the MeNZB™ vaccine
between 2004 and 2008.
Patients were confirmed to
have either gonorrhoea, or
chlamydia, or coinfection with
both.
Those
who
had
gonorrhoea were significantly
less likely to have received the
MeNZB™ vaccine than those
diagnosed with chlamydia. The
difference in the odds ratio
equated
to
a
vaccine
effectiveness of 31% against
gonorrhoea
(Petousis-Harris,
Paynter,
Morgan,
Saxton,
McArdle, et al., 2017).
The second study has not yet
been published but the findings
13