CHARACTERIZATION OF NEISSERIA-MENINGITIDIS STRAINS CAUSING DISEASE INCOMPLEMENT-DEFICIENT AND COMPLEMENT-SUFFICIENT PATIENTS

Serotyping and serosubtyping of meningococci showed no difference betw een isolates from 44 complement-deficient persons and from 50 compleme nt-sufficient persons with meningococcal disease. Multilocus enzyme el ectrophoretic typing of the meningococci revealed 54 electrophoretic t ypes that were equally distributed among isolates from complement-defi cient and complement-sufficient patients. Analysis of strains isolated from eight complement-deficient persons with 11 recurrences of mening ococcal disease showed that one strain ias identical to the strain pre viously isolated from the same individual. Our results indicate that t here are no differences between the clonal distributions of strains in fecting complement-deficient and complement-sufficient patients. Most recurrences were infections caused by different strains.