Scientists have revealed that they have discovered two new vaccines that can prevent the transmission of meningitis bacteria from person to person by nearly 40 percent.
Researchers at the University of Southampton said that the vaccines do this by reducing 'carriage' of the responsible bacteria in the nose and throats of the population.
Robert Read, Professor of Infectious Diseases at the University of Southampton, who led the study, said that the standard practice is to vaccinate with the aim of inducing high levels of antibodies in the blood to protect against the disease, but we know that these antibodies can disappear over the course of a few months.
Participants were either given two doses of a control vaccine, two doses of the 4CMenB vaccine or one dose of MenACWY-CRM and then a placebo.
MenACWY-CRM was shown to reduce carriage rates by 39 per cent while the 4CMenB vaccine, which was recently approved by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) in March, reduced carriage rates by between 20 and 30 per cent.
The study was published in The Lancet.