High Risk for Invasive Meningococcal Disease Among Patients Receiving Eculizumab (Soliris) Despite Receipt of Meningococcal Vaccine

High Risk for Invasive Meningococcal Disease Among Patients Receiving Eculizumab (Soliris) Despite Receipt of Meningococcal Vaccine

Use of eculizumab (Soliris, Alexion Pharmaceuticals), a terminal complement inhibitor, is associated with a 1,000-fold to 2,000-fold increased incidence of meningococcal disease (1). Administration of meningococcal vaccines is recommended for patients receiving eculizumab before beginning treatment (2,3). Sixteen cases of meningococcal disease were identified in eculizumab recipients in the Uni...

Need for Optimisation of Immunisation Strategies Targeting Invasive Meningococcal Disease in the Netherlands

Invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) is a severe bacterial infectious disease with high mortality and morbidity rates worldwide. In recent years, industrialised countries have implemented vaccines targeting IMD in their National Immunisation Programmes (NIPs). In 2002, the Netherlands successfully implemented a single dose of meningococcal serogroup C conjugate vaccine at the age of 14 months a...

Surveillance of Invasive Meningococcal Disease

Invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) is a nationally reportable disease in Canada. Since 1985, the Laboratory Centre for Disease Control (LCDC) has enhanced IMD surveillance to correlate case-by-case information provided by the provinces and territories with detailed laboratory studies done at the National Laboratory for Bacteriology at LCDC. This report provides information on IMD from 1 Janua...

Invasive meningococcal disease in childhood.

Meningococcal disease: identifying high-risk cases

In the previous issue of Critical Care, Vermont and colleagues presented a simple but well-executed observational study describing the levels of chemokines in the serum of 58 children with meningococcal sepsis. The chemokine levels correlated with disease severity and outcome. Significant correlations were demonstrated between admission chemokine levels and the Paediatric Risk of Mortality scor...