BACKGROUND Invasive meningococcal disease (IMD), is a widely distributed, complex human disease affecting all age categories. The causative agent, Neisseria meningitidis, is spread through aerosol respiratory droplets. 13 different serogroups have been identified, each with varying epidemiological features including prevalence, virulence, immunogenicity, geographical and temporal distribution. ...

In 2012, there were 208 laboratory-confirmed cases of invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) analysed by the National Neisseria Network, and 222 cases notified to the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System, thus laboratory data were available for 93.7% of cases of IMD in Australia in 2012. Isolates of Neisseria meningitidis from 116 invasive cases of meningococcal disease were available...

INTRODUCTION The study aims to investigate the change in the burden of disease and the microbiological characteristics of Invasive Meningococcal Disease (IMD) in Puglia in comparison with overall incidence from 1994 through 2014. METHODS Data are gathered in the frame of the National Surveillance System coordinated by the National Reference Laboratory (NRL) of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità...

OBJECTIVE Invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) outbreaks in men who have sex with men (MSM) have been associated with meningococcal colonisation of the urethra and rectum, but little is known about this colonisation or co-colonisation with the closely related gonococcus. Whole genome sequencing (WGS) was employed to explore these phenomena. METHODS Meningococci isolated from the urogenital tr...

Background: Invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) remains a major public health problem associated with death and severe consequences, especially in children. However, IMD is preventable through vaccination, vaccines available to cover five of the six most common disease-causing strains (A, B, C, X, Y, W). Surveillance systems are necessary for monitoring incidence, together severity serogroup p...

BACKGROUND Epidemiology of Neisseria meningitidis has been changing since the introduction of universal vaccination programmes against meningococcal serogroup C (MenC) and meningococcal serogroup B (MenB) has now become dominant. This study aimed to analyse the cases reported in institutional data recording systems to estimate the burden of invasive meningococcal diseases (IMDs) and assess the ...

VOLUME 90, NO. 4 In Quebec, the annual number of reported cases of invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) increased from 37 in 1984 to 124 in 1990. The increase and the emergence of a virulent strain of serogroup C prompted the Ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux (Provincial Ministry of Health) to immunize all children aged 6 months to 19 years in 1992. The increased incidence of IMD wa...

BACKGROUND To assess changes in the pattern of Invasive Meningococcal Disease (IMD) in Italy after the introduction of conjugate menC vaccine in the National Vaccine Plan 2005-2007 and to provide information for developing timely and appropriate public health interventions, analyses of microbiological features of isolates and clinical characteristics of patients have been carried out. In Italy,...

Background System factors in a regional Australian health district contributed to avoidable care deviations from invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) management guidelines. Traditional root cause analysis (RCA) is not well-suited to IMD, focusing on individual cases rather than system improvements. As IMD requires complex care across healthcare silos, it presents an opportunity to explore and a...

The reference laboratories of the Australian Meningococcal Surveillance Programme report data on the number of cases confirmed by laboratory testing using culture and by non-culture based techniques. Culture positive cases, where Neisseria meningitidis is grown from a normally sterile site or skin lesions, and non-culture based diagnoses, derived from results of nucleic acid amplification assay...