Why Meningitis That Hit Princeton Is Hard To Beat With Vaccines
by Maanvi Singh
December 12, 2013 5:01 PM
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It turns out that the meningitis B bacteria are tricky little things. They have a sugar coating that's very similar to sugars found on the surface of certain cells in the human brain and body.
Dr. Walter Orenstein, associate director of Emory Vaccine Center, says this sugar coating complicates the development of an effective meningitis B vaccine.
The older, more common vaccine (which protects against strains A, C, W-135 and Y) works by training the body's immune cells to recognize the sugar on the meningitis-causing bacteria as something bad, Orenstein tells Shots.
The same approach won't work for the B-type bacteria.
When immune cells encounter the meningitis B sugar coating, they're more likely to identify it as belonging to a friend rather than a foe, Orenstein says. They're used to seeing the same sugar all over the human cells.
There are ways to teach our immune system that the meningitis B coating is bad, but that could be risky, he says. In the hunt for meningitis bacteria, the immune system could start attacking human cells by mistake...
