Citation

BibTex format

@article{Geng:2025:10.1371/journal.pmed.1004521,
author = {Geng, L and Whittles, LK and Dickens, BL and Chio, MTW and Chen, Y and Tan, RKJ and Ghani, A and Lim, JT},
doi = {10.1371/journal.pmed.1004521},
journal = {PLoS Medicine},
title = {Potential public health impacts of gonorrhea vaccination programmes under declining incidences: a modeling study},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004521},
volume = {22},
year = {2025}
}

RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB - Background:Gonorrhea is the second most common sexually transmitted disease notified in Singapore in 2023. Evidence suggests that the 4CMenB vaccine designed to protect against Neisseria meningitidis infection may offer partial cross-protection against gonorrhea. This generated interest in using 4CMenB for the purpose of staving gonorrhea transmission. We explored the efficacy of potential gonorrhea vaccination strategies in the context of historically declining gonorrhea incidence.Methods and findings:We employed an integrated transmission-dynamic model, calibrated using Bayesian methods to local surveillance data to understand the potential public health impact of 4CMenB in reducing gonorrhea acquisition and transmission in men who have sex with men (MSM) in Singapore. We explored the efficacy of implementing six vaccination programmes: (1) offering vaccination to all male adolescents in schools (vaccination before entry [VbE]), (2) offering vaccination to individuals attending sexual health clinics for testing (vaccination on attendance [VoA]), (3) offering vaccination to individuals attending sexual health clinics and who were diagnosed with gonorrhea (vaccination on diagnosis [VoD]), or (4) vaccination according to risk (VaR), by offering vaccination to patients who were diagnosed with gonorrhea plus individuals who tested negative, but report having more than five sexual partners per year. We further examined how altering (5) VoA and (6) VoD strategies changed if the strategies only targeted high risk groups (VoA(H),VoD(H)). We assessed efficacy by examining vaccination impact relative to no vaccination and when behavioral parameters were held constant. We further ascertained the effects of varying vaccine uptake (10%, 33%, 100%), vaccine efficacy (22%, 31%, 47%), and duration of protection (1.5, 4, 7.5 years) on the effectiveness of each vaccination strategy.For a hypothetical 10-year vaccination programme, VbE had 14.18% of MSM gonorrhea cases averted over t
AU - Geng,L
AU - Whittles,LK
AU - Dickens,BL
AU - Chio,MTW
AU - Chen,Y
AU - Tan,RKJ
AU - Ghani,A
AU - Lim,JT
DO - 10.1371/journal.pmed.1004521
PY - 2025///
SN - 1549-1277
TI - Potential public health impacts of gonorrhea vaccination programmes under declining incidences: a modeling study
T2 - PLoS Medicine
UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004521
UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004521
VL - 22
ER -

Contact us


For any enquiries related to the MRC Centre please contact:

Scientific Manager
Susannah Fisher
mrc.gida@imperial.ac.uk

External Relationships and Communications Manager
Dr Sabine van Elsland
s.van-elsland@imperial.ac.uk