Marcadores epidemiológicos de cepas de Neisseria meningitidis aisladas en Cuba durante el período 1985 a 1992.

Abstract

Genotypic markers, that give a more complete information on the epidemiology of meningococcal disease (MD) and complement the characterization obtained with the other traditional markers, are used to study the genetic variability and population structure of Neissseria meningitidis strains isolated in outbursts and epidemics. The epidemiological follow-up of the disease is an important task carried out by Finlay Institute. For this purpose 91 epidemic strains isolated from 1985 to 1992 were studied. The identification by genus, species and serogroups was carried out by conventional techniques and, for the classification in sero/subtypes, a whole-cell ELISA with monoclonal antibodies (AcMs) was used. Sensitivity and resistance against penicillin, chloramphenicol, sodium sulphadiazine, ciproflaxin, rifampin and ceftriaxone and the study of 14 enzymes obtained from strain lysates was carried out for the first time in our country. Among the Cuban strains 26 electrophoretic types (ETs) were found with complexes ET-5 (67,0%) and A4 (3,3%) prevailing. Only serogroup B was detected with predominance of serotypes 4 (67,0%) and 15 (27,5%), together with subtypes P1.15, P1.10 and P1.16. Moderate. susceptibility (MS) to penicillin and resistance (R) to sodium sulphadiazine were respectively of 80,0 and 42,8%. All strains were sensitive to the rest of the drugs.

Keywords

• Neisseria meningitidis
• serogroups
• serotypes
• subtypes