On behalf of students at the University of California at Riverside, public health officials are calling for beginning an inoculation initiative of the unregulated anti-meningitis vaccine. Bexsero vaccine manufactured by Novartis .
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Andrin Oswald, head of the vaccines and diagnostics unit at Novartis explained: “Researchers analyzed the genes of hundreds of meningitis B strains before they found a few chemicals that most of the strains seemed to share. But substrates are different around the globe.”
Oswald said: “The Novartis vaccine protects against at least 70 percent of meningitis B strains — and up to 95 percent of strains in some countries. [I hope] the FDA will approve Bexsero for broader use in the U.S. sometime soon.”
Bexsero has not been approved for use in Europe and Canada; but are awaiting final decisions on whether or not they can sell their drug.
At Princeton, over 5,000 students were inoculated on campus in a 4 day initiative.
College officials made the vaccine available to students after clinic hours upon request.
Last month, officials at Princeton University considered administering a meningitis vaccine to students on camps that has not been approved for use in the US by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Martin Mbugua, spokesperson for Princeton said they were meeting with trustees to discuss the possibility of giving students an unregulated vaccine.
The meningitis outbreak across the nation downplays the fact that this is actually an outbreak of acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) or polio.
When an individual becomes infected with the polio virus, they can develop different versions of the virus which include asceptic meningitis.
Meningitis has become a new reference for polio which has been surfacing across the globe.
The CDC agreed to the import of the Bexsero vaccine (manufactured by Novartis) “for use in the Princeton University community.”
Thomas Clark, expert on meningitis for the CDC commented: “This is a bad disease and we know how devastating it is. A lot of us had a gut feeling that there would be more cases and we should get the ball rolling. If you’re a student at Princeton University right now, your risk is quite high.”
The CDC will have Bexsero brought in from Australia or Europe to be disbursed to students after Princeton agrees.
Bexsero is in the Phase III of their trials ; being tested for approval by the FDA.
Novartis admits that meningitis is a ‘particularly elusive target . . . making it especially challenging to develop a broadly effective vaccine.”
The trials for Bexsero have involved 8,000 infants as young as 2 months old, children, adolescents and adults to demonstrate that the vaccine “can help protect vulnerable age groups against this devastating disease, including infants, the age group at the greatest risk of infection.”
Pritish Tosh, researcher for the Mayo Clinic, agrees that an unregulated vaccine should be given to the public because the data provided by the manufacturer “has had good results so far where it has been used.”
Tosh said: “Since there is a product available. It makes a lot of sense of me if the public health authorities go for it.”
Paul Przytychi, a graduate student, not alarmed by being given an unapproved vaccine by school administrators, said: “I’m honestly not too worried. When the vaccines come in, I’m going to get vaccinated just to be safe, but no one I know has been affected, so it’s not too scary yet.”
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