Miss Zomboko
JF-Expert Member
- May 18, 2014
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- 9,532
Kenya may give the world the first vaccine to protect against gonorrhoea, which causes about 87 million infections annually.
Scientists at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kemri) and the University of Oxford, UK, plan to recruit 50 Kenyans, aged between 18 and 25 years into a six-month gonorrhoea vaccine trial.
The trials, initially planned to start in June this year, are currently in the final approval phase and will be carried out at the Kemri clinic in Mtwapa, Kilifi County.
Once started, participants in the study – ‘Gonococcal Vaccine Study in Key Populations in Kenya,’ registration number NCT04297436, will get two doses of a meningitis vaccine, two months apart.
The meningitis vaccine called Bexsero and licensed in about 35 countries, but not yet in Kenya, has been found to protect against gonorrhoea.
“New evidence suggests that Bexsero which protects against meningitis may also be effective against gonorrhoea,” says Dr Eduard Sanders and Dr Eunice Nduati of Kemri in the study protocol.
Similar but separate studies are going on in the US and Australia, involving 2,200 and 730 gay men respectively. These trials are investigating the effectiveness of Bexsero to protect against gonorrhoea infections.
Scientists at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kemri) and the University of Oxford, UK, plan to recruit 50 Kenyans, aged between 18 and 25 years into a six-month gonorrhoea vaccine trial.
The trials, initially planned to start in June this year, are currently in the final approval phase and will be carried out at the Kemri clinic in Mtwapa, Kilifi County.
Once started, participants in the study – ‘Gonococcal Vaccine Study in Key Populations in Kenya,’ registration number NCT04297436, will get two doses of a meningitis vaccine, two months apart.
The meningitis vaccine called Bexsero and licensed in about 35 countries, but not yet in Kenya, has been found to protect against gonorrhoea.
“New evidence suggests that Bexsero which protects against meningitis may also be effective against gonorrhoea,” says Dr Eduard Sanders and Dr Eunice Nduati of Kemri in the study protocol.
Similar but separate studies are going on in the US and Australia, involving 2,200 and 730 gay men respectively. These trials are investigating the effectiveness of Bexsero to protect against gonorrhoea infections.
