Developments in the diagnosis of meningococcal disease and the characterization of Neisseria meningitidis

Meningococcal disease (MD) remains an important cause of morbidity and mortality around the world. The need for improved therapies and vaccines is therefore paramount. To achieve this, the bacterium needs to be better characterized and this can be done by molecular methods. Although phenotypic methods have provided important information on the meningococcus and led to the development of new vaccines, the design of future therapies relies on further molecular analyses. This review describes the use of a number of new techniques based on genotypic/sequence typing such as the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and multi-locus sequence typing (MLST). These methods will lead to the non-culture characterization of meningococci and thereby provide information to complement that from culture-based methods. DNA sequencing and microarrays will also lead to whole genome approaches to typing which will provide further insights into our understanding of this pathogen. (C) 2001 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.