Af. Marcelles et al., NEISSERIA-MENINGITIDIS - ISOLATION FROM T HE LOWER RESPIRATORY-TRACT SECRETIONS IN ADULT PATIENTS, Revista Clinica Espanola, 196(11), 1996, pp. 741-746
Objective. A bibliographic research was made using the Medline system
of the clinico-microbiological features of reported cases of Neisseria
meningitidis (NM) bronchopulmonary infection, as well as a retrospect
ive study of NM isolation from lower respiratory tract secretions from
adult inpatients. Materials and methods. All specimens from respirato
ry secretions were Gram stained and cultured onto blood, MacConkey and
chocolate (quantitative) agar plates; a BCYE-alpha agar plate was als
o used when pneumonia was diagnosed. Fifty-five clinical records were
retrospectively reviewed of patients with positive cultures for NM, fo
r a 12-year period (1983-1994). Results. A total of 67 samples were po
sitive among the 55 patients studied; sputum and tracheobronchial samp
les predominated. NM was recovered in pure culture from 48 specimens (
71.6%) and with counts higher than 10(6) colony forming units/ml (CFU)
. Twenty-seven isolates (40.3%) corresponded to serogroup B and 21 iso
lates (31.3%) did not group with serogroups A, B and C. Twenty-two pat
ients were diagnosed of pneumonia; eleven of these 22 patients had an
underlying chronic lung disease. Ten patients had a respiratory overin
fection, in eight cases an episode of acute bronchitis was recorded an
d, finally, in 15 patients there was NM colonization only. Conclusion.
The pathogenic role of NM in lower respiratory tract infections is pr
obably underestimated because its isolation is difficult, particularly
when there is oropharyngeal flora present, since in our study, in whi
ch only conventional culture media were used, samples which had NM rec
overed had a high number of colonies, in pure culture in most cases.