Meningococcal Disease Increasing in England’s Schools

Several countries in Europe, South America, and Australia are experiencing outbreaks of group W meningococcal (MenW) disease.

In England, MenW cases caused predominantly by sequence type 11 (ST11) increased from 19 cases in during 2008–09, to 176 reported cases in 2014–15.

In response to this increase, England launched an emergency immunization program in August 2015 with meningococcal ACWY conjugate vaccine (MenACWY) for adolescents.

This vaccination program replaced the MenC program for children 13–14 years of age.

This single-dose vaccination program aimed to directly protect vaccine-eligible cohorts and, in the long term, indirectly protect the wider population by reducing meningococcal carriage.

A new report in Emerging Infectious Disease shows this vaccination program reduced MenW cases by 69%.

The reduction in cases occurred despite only 36.6% of the study group having been fully vaccinated.

Meningococcal infection has always been the leading cause of meningitis in the UK.

Six different kinds, serogroups A, B, C, W, X, and Y cause the most disease. For decades meningococcal B has been the main serogroup, and meningococcal C was also common until the MenC vaccine was introduced, reducing cases to just a handful each year.

By the summer of 2017, MenACWY vaccine will have been offered to all teenagers in the United Kingdom.

Because this group also has the highest meningococcal carriage rates, these researchers hope that preventing the transmission through vaccination will reduce MenW cases and deaths in unvaccinated cohorts across all age groups in the coming years.

This MenW vaccine consists of a single injection which stimulates the body's immune system to fight the bacteria that cause meningitis and septicaemia. After being vaccinated, around 1 in 10 people get a headache or nausea, or some soreness at the injection site. These vaccine side effects tend to settle within a few days.