An oral, spray-based vaccine could help prevent recurrent urinary tract infections (UTIs) for up to nine years – and represents a potential alternative to antibiotic treatments, according to recent research.
Doctors at the UK’s Royal Berkshire Hospital studied the safety and effectiveness of the MV140 vaccine against recurrent urinary tract infections in 89 patients who were initially treated privately at The Urology Partnership Reading.
MV140 is a new vaccine against recurrent urinary tract infections and is administered under the tongue with two sprays of a pineapple-flavored suspension every day for three months. While researchers have previously examined the short-term safety and effectiveness of MV140, this is said to be the first long-term follow-up study reported worldwide.
Easy to manage
Researchers found that in both men and women with recurrent UTIs, 54% of study participants remained free of UTIs for nine years after vaccination with no significant side effects reported. Their results were presented at the European Association of Urology (EAU) congress in Paris. The full results of the study are expected to be published by the end of 2024.
Dr. Bob Yang, consultant urologist at the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust and co-leader of the study, said: “Before vaccination, all of our participants suffered from recurrent urinary tract infections and for many women these can be difficult to treat.” Nine years on After the first administration of this new UTI vaccine, about half of the participants remained infection-free. Overall, this vaccine is safe in the long term and our participants reported having fewer urinary tract infections that were less severe. Many of those who have had a UTI told us that simply drinking lots of water was enough to treat the UTI.
“This is a very easy-to-administer vaccine that could be administered by GPs as a three-month course. Many of our participants told us that the vaccination restored their quality of life. While we have not yet studied the effect of this vaccine in different patient populations, this follow-up data suggests that it could be a game-changer in the prevention of UTIs if widely offered and reduce the need for antibiotic treatments.”
In the original study, patients were initially followed for 12 months and data from women in the cohort were published in BJU International in 2017. For their nine-year follow-up study, researchers analyzed data from their original cohort’s electronic health records. They asked participants about their experiences with urinary tract infections since vaccination and asked them about side effects.
Forty-eight participants remained completely infection-free during nine years of follow-up. The average infection-free time in the entire cohort was 54.7 months (four and a half years) – 56.7 months for women and 44.3 months, one year less, for men. 40% of participants reported receiving repeat doses of the vaccine after one or two years.
Long-term safety and effectiveness
Gernot Bonkat, Professor of Urology at the Alta Uro Medical Center for Urology in Switzerland and Chair of the EAU Guidelines on Urological Infections, said: “These results are promising. Recurrent UTIs represent a significant economic burden and overuse of antibiotic treatments can lead to antibiotic-resistant infections. This follow-up study provides encouraging data on the long-term safety and effectiveness of the MV140 vaccine. Further research into more complex UTIs, as well as studies across different patient populations, is needed so that we can better optimize the use of this vaccine.
“Although we must be pragmatic, this vaccine is a potential breakthrough in the prevention of urinary tract infections and could provide a safe and effective alternative to conventional treatments.”
Developed by Spanish pharmaceutical company Immunotek, MV140 contains four species of bacteria in a suspension with water. It is available in 26 countries without a license. Participants in the study were all over the age of 18 and had no urinary tract infections when they were first offered the vaccine. None of the participants had other urinary abnormalities such as catheters, tumors or stones. The follow-up study included 72 women and 17 men and the results were self-reported.