Meningococcal Meningitis: Genotypes and Clinical Features

In a Dutch database analysis, serogroup C cc11 was the most virulent strain, and serogroup B was the most common strain.

In a cohort of patients with meningococcal meningitis, these investigators aimed to identify any correlations among bacterial genotype, presenting signs and symptoms, clinical course, and outcome. The 258 patients were listed in the database of the Dutch Meningitis Cohort Study, which contains cases identified by the Netherlands Reference Laboratory for Bacterial Meningitis from October 1998 to April 2002. All patients were older than 16 years and had community-acquired bacterial meningitis confirmed by CSF culture. The investigators used multilocus sequence typing (MLST), the gold standard for genotyping meningococci for epidemiologic purposes.

All patients in this study had Neisseria meningitidis in CSF. Of 256 meningococcal strains with s…

Reviewing Author

Karen L. Roos, MD