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...

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...

PURPOSE Prompt recognition and aggressive early treatment are the only effective measures against invasive meningococcal disease (IMD). Anti-inflammatory adjunctive treatment remains controversial and difficult to assess in patients with IMD. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of dexamethasone (DXM) as adjunctive treatment in different clinical forms of IMD, and attempt to ans...

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 (IMD) represents a public health problem and a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. IMD can occur as an endemic disease with sporadic cases or epidemics with outbreaks. Neisseria meningitis strains are divided into 13 serogroups, but only five (A, B, C, W-135, and Y) are responsible for most IMD across the world. All age groups are at risk for IMD, ...

BACKGROUND Several countries consider the implementation of a meningococcal serogroup B vaccine for young children and/or serogroup C or ACWY conjugate vaccine for adolescents. Representative information on clinical course of invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) is useful to evaluate cost-effectiveness of vaccination. Information on the relation between infecting meningococcal clonal complex (C...

Knowing the incidence of invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) is essential for planning appropriate vaccination policies. However, IMD may be underestimated because of misdiagnosis or insufficiently sensitive laboratory methods. Using a national molecular surveillance register, we assessed the number of cases misdiagnosed and diagnoses obtained postmortem with real-time PCR (rPCR), and we compa...

BACKGROUND Streptococcus pneumoniae and Neisseria meningitidis are frequent pathogens in life-threatening infections. Genetic variation in the immune system may predispose to these infections. Nuclear factor-κB is a key component of the TLR-pathway, controlled by inhibitors, encoded by the genes NFKBIA, NFKBIE and NFKBIZ. We aimed to replicate previous findings of genetic variation associated w...

Invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) caused by Neisseria meningitidis serogroup Y has increased in Europe, especially in Scandinavia. In Sweden, serogroup Y is now the dominating serogroup, and in 2012, the serogroup Y disease incidence was 0.46/100,000 population. We previously showed that a strain type belonging to sequence type 23 was responsible for the increased prevalence of this serogrou...

Invasive meningococcal disease (IMD), although uncommon, is difficult to diagnose and can be rapidly fatal, even in healthy young persons. IMD is cyclic, and serogroups responsible for disease vary by age group, although the prevalence of the serogroups changes over time and by geographical location. Two quadrivalent vaccines are licensed in the United States to prevent IMD caused by serogroups...