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Journal of Clinical Microbiology, December 2000, p. 4492-4498, Vol. 38, No. 12
Wellcome Trust Centre for the Epidemiology of
Infectious Disease, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford,
Oxford, OX1 3FY, United Kingdom,1 and
National Reference Laboratory for Meningococcal Infections,
National Institute of Public Health, Prague, Czech
Republic2
Received 15 May 2000/Returned for modification 31 July
2000/Accepted 13 September 2000
Population and evolutionary analyses of pathogenic bacteria are
frequently hindered by sampling strategies that concentrate on isolates
from patients with invasive disease. This is especially so for the
gram-negative diplococcus Neisseria meningitidis, a cause
of septicemia and meningitis worldwide. Meningococcal isolate collections almost exclusively comprise organisms originating from
patients with invasive meningococcal disease, although this bacterium
is a commensal inhabitant of the human nasopharynx and very rarely
causes pathological effects. In the present study, molecular
biology-based techniques were used to establish the genetic
relationships of 156 meningococci isolated from healthy young adults in
the Czech Republic during 1993. None of the individuals sampled had
known links to patients with invasive disease. Multilocus sequence
typing (MLST) showed that the bacterial population was highly diverse,
comprising 71 different sequence types (STs) which were assigned to 34 distinct complexes or lineages. Three previously identified
hyperinvasive lineages were present: 26 isolates (17%) belonged to the
ST-41 complex (lineage 3); 4 (2.6%) belonged to the ST-11
(electrophoretic type [ET-37]) complex, and 1 (0.6%) belonged to the
ST-32 (ET-5) complex. The data were consistent with the view that most
nucleotide sequence diversity resulted from the reassortment of alleles
by horizontal genetic exchange.
0095-1137/00/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Carried Meningococci in the Czech Republic: a
Diverse Recombining Population
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Wellcome Trust
Centre for the Epidemiology of Infectious Disease, Department of
Zoology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3FY,
United Kingdom. Phone: 44 (1865) 271284. Fax: 44 (1865) 271284. E-mail: martin.maiden{at}zoo.ox.ac.uk.
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