Invasive Meningococcal Disease in Adolescents and Young Adults

Vaccination with a multicomponent meningococcal B vaccine in prevention of disease in adolescents and young adults.

Vaccination programs employing capsular-based meningococcal vaccines have proved successful in a variety of settings globally since first introduced over 40 years ago. Similar successes have been demonstrated using meningococcal vaccines for use against serogroup B (MenB) outbreak strains but the diversity of MenB strains has limited vaccine use outside targeted geographic regions. MenB continu...

Delayed recognition of fatal invasive meningococcal disease in adults

INTRODUCTION Invasive meningococcal disease can be difficult to detect early in its course when patients may appear well and the severity of their illness is obscured by non-specific complaints. CASE PRESENTATION We report five cases of meningococcal sepsis in adult patients who presented to an emergency department early in the course of their disease, but whose severity of illness was not re...

Association of a Bacteriophage with Meningococcal Disease in Young Adults

Despite being the agent of life-threatening meningitis, Neisseria meningitidis is usually carried asymptomatically in the nasopharynx of humans and only occasionally causes disease. The genetic bases for virulence have not been entirely elucidated and the search for new virulence factors in this species is hampered by the lack of an animal model representative of the human disease. As an altern...

Invasive meningococcal disease in childhood.

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...