Meningococcal carriage among a university student population-United States, 2015

Authors

Lucy Breakwell, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Melissa Whaley, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Unab I. Khan, Aga Khan UniversityFollow
Utpala Bandy, Rhode Island Department of Health
Nicole Alexander-Scott, Rhode Island Department of Health
Lynn Dupont, Brown University
Cindy Vanner, Rhode Island Department of Health
How-Yi Changa, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Jeni T. Vuong, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Stacey Martin, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Jessica R. MacNeila, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Xin Wang, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Sarah A. Meyer, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Document Type

Article

Department

Family Medicine

Abstract

Objectives : Several outbreaks of serogroup B meningococcal disease have occurred among university students in recent years. In the setting of high coverage of the quadrivalent meningococcal conjugate vaccine and prior to widespread use of serogroup B meningococcal vaccines among adolescents, we conducted surveys to characterize the prevalence and molecular characteristics of meningococcal carriage among university students.
Methods: Two cross-sectional oropharyngeal carriage surveys were conducted among undergraduates at a Rhode Island university. Isolates were characterized using slide agglutination, real-time polymerase chain reaction (rt-PCR), and whole genome sequencing. Adjusted prevalence ratios and 95% confidence intervals were calculated using Poisson regression to determine risk factors for carriage.
Results : A total of 1837 oropharyngeal specimens were obtained from 1478 unique participants. Overall carriage prevalence was 12.7-14.6% during the two survey rounds, with 1.8-2.6% for capsular genotype B, 0.9-1.0% for capsular genotypes C, W, or Y, and 9.9-10.8% for nongroupable strains by rt-PCR. Meningococcal carriage was associated with being male, smoking, party or club attendance, recent antibiotic use (inverse correlation), and recent respiratory infections.
Conclusions : In this university setting, the majority of meningococcal carriage was due to nongroupable strains, followed by serogroup B. Further evaluation is needed to understand the dynamics of serogroup B carriage and disease among university students.

Comments

This work was published before the author joined Aga Khan University.

Publication (Name of Journal)

Vaccine

Recommended Citation

Breakwell, L., Whaley, M., Khan, U. I., Bandy, U., Alexander-Scott, N., Dupont, L., Vanner, C., Changa, H., Vuong, J. T., Martin, S., MacNeila, J. R., Wang, X., Meyer, S. A. (2018). Meningococcal carriage among a university student population-United States, 2015. Vaccine, 36(1), 29-35.
Available at: https://ecommons.aku.edu/pakistan_fhs_mc_fam_med/200

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.