Unveiling New Aspects of Meningococcal Carriage and Disease Prevention.

Abstract

To access publisher's full text version of this article, please click on the hyperlink in Additional Links field or click on the hyperlink at the top of the page marked Files. This article is open access.Recently, two protein-based vaccines have been approved for the prevention of invasive meningococcal disease caused by Neisseria meningitidis serogroup B (MenB). It is therefore important to study carefully if and how these pathogens respond to widespread vaccination. Traditionally, meningococci have been classified on the basis of capsular phenotypes, but variable levels of capsule expression can influence the results, mainly among MenB strains. In this issue, Jones and colleagues (J Clin Microbiol 54:25-34, 2016, http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/JCM.01447-15) compare whole-genome sequencing to traditional phenotypic methods of classifying meningococci. They demonstrate that for MenB in particular, sequencing-based methods are far superior to traditional methods, especially when it comes to characterizing carriage isolates. This has important implications for future surveillance