Article,
Meningococcal disease in The Netherlands, 1958-1990: a steady increase in the incidence since 1982 partially caused by new serotypes and subtypes of Neisseria meningitidis
Clinical Infectious Diseases: An Official Publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, 16 (2): 237--46 (February 1993)PMID: 8443302.
Abstract
In order to explain a threefold increase in the incidence of meningococcal disease in the Netherlands during the 1980s, we serotyped and subtyped Neisseria meningitidis isolates recovered between 1958 and 1990 from \textgreater 3,000 patients with systemic disease. No single strain could be held responsible for the increase. Apart from the newly introduced strain B:4:P1.4, which became the most prevalent phenotype in 1990 (21\% of all isolates), the majority of the cases in 1990 were caused by many different strains that were already present in the Netherlands before 1980. For the period 1980-1990, a shift in the age distribution of patients with meningococcal disease from younger to older age categories was found, particularly with regard to cases due to meningococci of serogroup B; this shift is explained by the changing distribution of serotypes and subtypes within serogroup B. A polyvalent group B, class 1 outer-membrane-protein vaccine of a stable composition could theoretically have prevented approximately 80\% of all group B meningococcal infections in the Netherlands during the past 30 years.
Tags
- adolescent,
- adult,
- age
- bacterial
- child,
- factors
- factors,
- humans,
- infant,
- meningitidis,
- meningitis,
- meningococcal,
- neisseria
- netherlands,
- newborn,
- preschool,
- seroepidemiologic
- serotyping,
- studies,
- techniques,
- time
- typing
