Talk:Neisseria meningitidis

strains, vaccination etc.
It would better to have Meningococcal disease (Meningococcal meningitis which redirects to same) and Meningococcemia all redirect here. This article links as required to meningitis and septicemia (otherwise much of same info discussed on this bacteria page, overall men. disease page, men. septicaemia, men. menigitis, septicaemia & menigitis pages....phew). David Ruben Talk 01:26, 15 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Agree - as proposer David Ruben Talk 01:26, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Oppose - differentiate between disease and bacteria - Bemoeial 21:23, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Oppose - Smooth O 07:53, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Oppose - Gak 19:02, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion merge Meningococcemia to Neisseria meningitidis
My proposal is on same basis as for Meningococcal disease (foir which Meningococcal meningitis redirects to it), but I'll split the proposal in case people feel that one merger has different merits from the other. David Ruben Talk 01:31, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Agree - as proposer David Ruben Talk 01:31, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Oppose - differentiate between disease and bacteria - Bemoeial 21:23, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Oppose - Gak 19:02, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion merge Meningococcal disease and Meningococcemia

 * I'd support merging the two medical condition pages (Meningococcal disease and Meningococcemia), but recommend that those conditions be kept distinct from the page on the organism (Neisseria meningitidis). --Arcadian 19:09, 24 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Agree - Bemoeial 21:23, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Agree - The bacterium and the disease(s) are distinct (though should be linked with one another), but meningococcemia seems to be a presenting element in meningococcal disease, and should be mentioned as such in that article. Blackjack4124 06:52, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Agree - Gak 19:01, 5 October 2006 (UTC) Organism and disease should be kept separate, but there is no reason why these two articles should not be merged.

Meningococcal disease has just been merged to Meningococcemia, but is this not the wrong way round? Most of what has been merged in is about the meningococcal meningitis, not the sepicaemia (i.e. Severe headache, Nausea and vomiting, Stiff neck, Sensitivity to light (photophobia), Mental status changes). Furthermore whilst the diagnosis of Meningococcemia is indeed through blood culture, for the meningitis it should be via a lumbar puncture sample. Would it not be better to have all of this as the article Meningococcal disease, which then includes separate descriptions of both the septicaemia (Meningococcemia) and the meningitis ? David Ruben Talk 03:13, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, excellent points, also meningococcal disease is a far more familiar term. cyclosarin (talk) 06:17, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

i learned this differently
[quote] B - is the most lethal form, comprising 40% of UK cases. The changing nature of the B group has prevented formation of a general B vaccine in the UK. However there has been developed the vaccine MeNZB against a specific strain of group B meningococcus, currently being used to control an epidemic in New Zealand. [/quote]

I learned this as not that it was the changing nature, but that the antigens are too similar to human antigens...

Thoughts? Tkjazzer 02:44, 12 November 2007 (UTC)


 * From what I learned, it is a combination of the two... the B serogroup does have polysialic acid on its LPS, which prevents some immune system components from recognizing it, but there is a high amount of variation of the surface proteins of all groups, partially due to the fact that the bacteria continuously sheds its LPS, but also due to recombination (is this the correct term?) of the genes for the production of the surface antigens. Can anyone else elaborate?   Jsmith86 (talk) 22:21, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

The Group B strain is an endemic form like the C strain. These are just serotypes of the Capsule that allows evasion of the host immune system (virulence factor). The B-type capsule could be considered epidemic, but it is more endemic since it's constantly in the environment, because it gives the bacteria molecular mimicry. Thus, we don't have a vaccine for it while we do have for the others. This why it's an endemic strain. The epidemic strain from what I understand has the Group A serotype. This is minor though.

Also,, as a correction, the bacteria does not have LPS, but actually has what is called LOS. It's a closely related to LPS. It still retains Lipid A in the core portion of the polysaccharide, but it does not have the O-antigen. This is a common misconception.

From vaccine enthusiast med student: the current meningococcal vaccine is a capsule polysaccharide (sometimes conjugated to an unrelated toxoid for greater immunogenicity, like tetanus or diptheria toxin) including polysaccharides from the serotypes A, C, Y and W135, which cause a great deal of disease in areas without the vaccine. However, it doesn't include the serotype B polysaccharide because, as noted above, the capsule of serotype B is a homopolymer of sialic acid, which is the same molecule found on some neurons, particularly in fetal neural development. This actually results in the immune system refusing to recognize the sialic acid polymer as an antigen, since it would then cause an immune response against self, namely, some neural tissue. There have been attempts made to break the tolerance, and it has been done in animal models and in some limited human trials, but this may result in autoimmune destruction of brain tissue. Therefore while a vaccine may be possible against serotype B, the antigen we use to induce immunity probably will not be the capsule polysaccharide. This is all covered fairly well in RAPPUOLI, R., POLLARD, A. J. & MOXON, E. R. 2004. Meningococcal Conjugate and Protein-Based Vaccines. In: LEVINE, M. M., KAPER, J. B., RAPPUOLI, R., LIU, M. A. & GOOD, M. F. (eds.) New Generation Vaccines. New York: Marcel Dekker. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.122.91.3 (talk) 21:25, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Wingiv (talk) 17:05, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Importance of the X strain?
I just noticed that there has been an edit adding the X strain as one of the most medically important strains. Is the cited outbreak in Nigeria the only occurance of this strain, or is it starting to occur more as people are becomming vaccinated against other strains?Jsmith86 (talk) 01:47, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Proposed merge
Hello to all! I am proposing a merge from the following articles into this article:
 * Shwartzman phenomenon

This is for the following reasons:
 * The main article would benefit from this information in one place.
 * The article to be merged is short and poorly sourced and has not been edited significantly in 3-4 years. On merging will add a secondary source that supports this phenomenon.
 * This knowledge shouldn't be obscured from readers of this article by virtue of being isolated in an obscure article.
 * This topic may receive more attention by being mentioned in the main article.
 * The article may, if needs be, could be re-expanded at a later date.

Kind Regards, LT910001 (talk) 02:21, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Guess this is a bit late but I would oppose this, the phenomenon seems to typically be "observed during delivery or abortion, when foreign bodies are introduced into the tissues of the female reproductive system." Cannolis (talk) 03:01, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Alright. With no consensus over 4+ months I will remove the merge tags without performing the merge. --LT910001 (talk) 23:43, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

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Updated sero groups ?
In the recent literature (like this) it seems there is a change in sero types naming convention.

This is based on this paper (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23628376/ ), also "Plotkin's Vaccines" 7th Ed. p620 states: "However, what had been designated as group D was recently found to be an unencapsulated variant of group C; therefore, there are 12 known meningococcal capsular groups: A, B, C, E (formerly known as 29E), H, I, K, L, W (formerly known as W-135), X, Y, and Z. Organisms with capsular groups A, B, C, W, X, or Y are responsible for almost all cases of disease." (accentuation by myself).

Thoughts? --Julius Senegal (talk) 21:38, 2 December 2020 (UTC)