BACKGROUND College students living in residential halls are at increased risk of meningococcal disease. Unlike that for serogroups prevented by quadrivalent meningococcal vaccines, public health response to outbreaks of serogroup B meningococcal disease is limited by lack of a US licensed vaccine. METHODS In March 2010, we investigated a prolonged outbreak of serogroup B disease associated wi...

BACKGROUND Following the introduction of meningococcal serogroup C conjugate vaccine in Italy in 2005, changes in the epidemiology of Invasive Meningococcal Disease (IMD) were expected. The study aims were to describe the epidemiological trend and to characterize the isolates collected during the period 2008/09-2012/13 by multilocus sequence typing (MLST). Data on laboratory confirmed meningoco...

Genomic diversity of Listeria monocytogenes isolates from the deboning and slicing areas three dry-cured ham processing plants was analysed. L. detected in 58 out 491 samples environment equipment surfaces, all area, with differences prevalence among facilities. The most frequent PCR-serogroup IIa (74.1%) followed by IIb IIc, only one isolate serogroup IVb. Twenty different pulsotypes 11 sequen...

Neisseria meningitidis is a leading cause of bacterial meningitis and other serious infections worldwide. The epidemiological profile of N. meningitidis is highly changeable, with great differences in disease incidence and serogroup distribution. Six serogroups (namely serogroups A, B, C, W-135, X, and Y) are responsible for most cases of meningococcal disease worldwide; the epidemiological pro...

Campylobacter jejuni was isolated from stool cultures from 14 (30%) of 46 patients with Guillain-Barré syndrome and from 6 (1.2%) of 503 healthy persons, and the difference was highly significant (p < 0.0001). In addition, serological evidence of recent C. jejuni infection was found in 5 of 29 patients with negative stool cultures. Therefore, 41% of patients were associated with C. jejuni infec...

Hamond C., Martins G., Loureiro A.P., Bremont S., Medeiros M.A., Bourhy P. & Lilenbaum W. 2015. First isolation and characterization of Leptospira interrogans serogroup Australis from swine in Brazil. Pesquisa Veterinária Brasileira 35(1):6-8. Laboratório de Bacteriologia Veterinária, Instituto Biomédico, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rua Hernani de Melo 101, Niteroi, RJ 24210-030, Brazil. E...

The coronavirus heptide repeat (HR) region in the spike protein induces neutralizing antibodies that block the postfusion core formation and inhibit virus entry into target cells. The HR2 regions for coronaviruses of the same serogroup share high homology. We found that polyclonal antibodies derived from transmissible gastroenteritis coronavirus HR2 and upstream region were cross-reactive with ...

Studies of immunity to Pseudomonas aeruginosa have indicated that a variety of potential immunogens can elicit protection in animal models, utilizing both antibody- and cell-mediated immune effectors for protection. To attempt to optimize delivery of multiple protective antigens and elicit a broad range of immune effectors, we produced an aroA deletion mutant of the P. aeruginosa serogroup O2/O...

BACKGROUND In order to inform meningococcal disease prevention strategies, we analysed the epidemiology of invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) in the province of Quebec, Canada, 10 years before and 10 years after the introduction of serogroup C conjugate vaccination. METHODOLOGY IMD cases reported to the provincial notifiable disease registry in 1991-2011 and isolates submitted for laborator...

BACKGROUND Published data on the epidemiology of meningococcal disease in Latin America and the Caribbean region is scarce and, when available, it is often published in Spanish and/or in non-peer-reviewed journals, making it difficult for the international scientific community to have access. METHODS Laboratory data on 4,735 Neisseria meningitidis strains was collected and reported by the Nat...