A new generation of techniques for detailed identification of bacteria that cause meningitis and septicaemia

Research archive

To measure the impact of new immunisations, detailed and accurate identification of types of meningitis and septicaemia is crucial.

A conjugate vaccine against pneumococcal meningitis is now licensed and may be used in the UK and Ireland. Experimental vaccines against Group B meningococcal disease are also being tested in research funded by the Foundation and others.

However, unlike the new Men C vaccine, which prevents all Group C meningococcal disease, protection from these vaccines is mostly limited to certain types. There are at least 90 types of pneumococcal bacteria and over 200 types of Group B meningococcal bacteria. Evaluating the effectiveness of these vaccines will be tremendously complex. It will require a whole new generation of techniques to identify more precisely the types of bacteria causing these diseases. To cope with the huge numbers of samples needing analysis in vaccine trials, these techniques must be able to distinguish amongst all types using a single test-run.

In this project, two state-of-the-art technologies are being evaluated and developed to do this. One uses fluorescent microscopic beads, each of which represents a different type of bacteria, and can run 96 different tests in a single assay. The second technology is called DNA microarrays, and can distinguish amongst several hundred types of bacteria on a single slide. Once the researchers have developed these techniques, they will roll them out to other laboratories in Europe and beyond.