Diversity of greek meningococcal serogroup B isolates and estimated coverage of the 4CMenB meningococcal vaccine.

Georgina Tzanakaki (1) , Eva Hong (2) , Konstatinos Kesanopoulos (1) , Athanasia Xirogianni (1) , Stefania Bambini (3) , Luca Orlandi (1) , Maurizio Comanducci (1) , Alessandro Muzzi (1) , Muhamed-Kheir Taha (1)

1 National Meningitis Reference Laboratory
2 Infections Bactériennes Invasives
3 Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics [Siena]

BACKGROUND: Serogroup B meningococcal (MenB) isolates currently account for approximately 90% of invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) in Greece with ST-162 clonal complex predominating. The potential of a multicomponent meningococcal B vaccine (4CMenB) recently licensed in Europe was investigated in order to find whether the aforementioned vaccine will cover the MenB strains circulating in Greece. A panel of 148 serogroup B invasive meningococcal strains was characterized by multilocus sequence typing (MLST) and PorA subtyping. Vaccine components were typed by sequencing for factor H-binding protein (fHbp), Neisserial Heparin Binding Antigen (NHBA) and Neisseria adhesin A (NadA). Their expression was explored by Meningococcal Antigen Typing System (MATS). RESULTS: Global strain coverage predicted by MATS was 89.2% (95% CI 63.5%-98.6%) with 44.6%, 38.5% and 6.1% of strains covered by one, two and three vaccine antigens respectively. NHBA was the antigen responsible for the highest coverage (78.4%), followed by fHbp (52.7%), PorA (8.1%) and NadA (0.7%). The coverage of the major genotypes did not differ significantly. The most prevalent MLST genotype was the ST-162 clonal complex , accounting for 44.6% of the strains in the panel and with a predicted coverage of 86.4%, mainly due to NHBA and fHbp. CONCLUSIONS: 4CMenB has the potential to protect against a significant proportion of Greek invasive MenB strains.

Domains: Life Sciences [q-bio]; Microbiology and Parasitology

Georgina Tzanakaki, Eva Hong, Konstatinos Kesanopoulos, Athanasia Xirogianni, Stefania Bambini, et al.. Diversity of greek meningococcal serogroup B isolates and estimated coverage of the 4CMenB meningococcal vaccine.. BMC Microbiology, 2014, 14 (1), pp.111. ⟨10.1186/1471-2180-14-111⟩. ⟨pasteur-00990250⟩