Meninigitis immunisation: challenges, successes and new developments

Abstract

Meningitis, defined as the inflammation of the lining surrounding the spine and the brain, can be caused by bacteria, viruses and fungi. Bacterial meningitis is the most serious form of the disease, causing around 170000 deaths worldwide each year. Most cases of bacterial meningitis are caused by three bacteria-Streptococcus pneumoniae, Neisseria meningitidis and Haemophilus influenzae type B. In the UK, vaccines are available to combat most of these, yet, according to the Meningitis Research Foundation, around 3400 cases of bacterial meningitis and septicaemia occur every year in the UK and the Republic of Ireland. This article reviews the history of vaccination against meningitis, explores the challenges facing nurses who are at the interface of immunisation policy and public expectations, outlines the current schedule and discusses advances in vaccine technology that offer the potential of a new immunisation against N meningitidis B, the leading cause of meningitis in the UK.

Low-dose recombinant properdin provides substantial protection againstStreptococcus pneumoniaeandNeisseria meningitidisinfection

“…Vaccination programs have reduced the rates of infection in developed countries, but neonates and elderly adults remain especially vulnerable (6,7). The efficacy of vaccination is further limited by the emergence of new strains of S. pneumoniae and N. meningitidis.…”

Diagnoses of Neisseria Bacteria via Neural Networks Techniques

“…Table (1) shows the extraction of image features and their corresponding network performance accuracy. However, it is in the Neisseria bacterium diagnostic system that acceptable accuracy obtained compared to performance results in previous research in biomedical image computer system diagnostics, such as the classification of acute leukemia that performs with an accuracy of 96% and 94% in blast cell region extraction [12].…”

“…Meningitis is a health problem of the thin lining that surround the brain and spinal cord [1]. The type caused by bacteria is considered the most dangerous and can cause disabling, including brain injury and hearing loss, meningitis be diagnosed after death, due to the delay in diagnosis by the complex chemical and physical methods used to analyze patient samples.…”

In search of a vaccine against COVID-19: implications for nursing practice

“…This knowledge must then be applied to determine which parts of the immune system need to be stimulated or challenged in order to ensure a robust, long-lasting and, above all, safe vaccine-mediated immune response (Morrison and Plotkin, 2016).The completion of human genome mapping, along with recent progress in DNA sequencing (including that of pathogens), has given rise to a whole host of new possibilities in terms of vaccine technology. To date, these have been used successfully for some pathogens, such as meningitis B (Boulton, 2013).…”