Abstract
In 2015, Niger reported the largest epidemic of Neisseria meningitidis serogroup C (NmC) meningitis in sub-Saharan Africa. The NmC epidemic coincided with serogroup W (NmW) cases during the epidemic season, resulting in a total of 9,367 meningococcal cases through June 2015. To clarify the phylogenetic association, genetic evolution, and antibiotic determinants of the meningococcal strains in Niger, we sequenced the genomes of 102 isolates from this epidemic, comprising 81 NmC and 21 NmW isolates. The genomes of 82 isolates were completed, and all 102 were included in the analysis. All NmC isolates had sequence type 10217, which caused the outbreaks in Nigeria during 2013–2014 and for which a clonal complex has not yet been defined. The NmC isolates from Niger were substantially different from other NmC isolates collected globally. All NmW isolates belonged to clonal complex 11 and were closely related to the isolates causing recent outbreaks in Africa.
Highlights
N. meningitidis serogroup C (NmC) disease has rarely been reported in the meningitis belt; it has not been detected in many molecular studies of invasive isolates [3,4] and is rarely found in carriage studies [5,6]
This study provides a genomic analysis of 102 invasive Neisseria meningitidis serogroup C (NmC) and NmC epidemic coincided with serogroup W (NmW) strains collected from Niger during a large epidemic in 2015
The NmC isolates were not closely related to the reference NmC strain FAM18 or to any of the NmC isolates that were selected from the United States and 20 countries but had the same ST as the strain that caused the outbreaks in Nigeria during 2013–2014 [8]
Summary
In 2015, Niger reported the largest epidemic of Neisseria meningitidis serogroup C (NmC) meningitis in sub-Saharan Africa. All NmC isolates had sequence type 10217, which caused the outbreaks in Nigeria during 2013–2014 and for which a clonal complex has not yet been defined. In 2015, an epidemic of 9,367 meningococcal meningitis cases occurred in Niger, with NmC disease comprising most laboratory-confirmed cases [9]. The first large epidemic of disease caused by CC11 NmW occurred during 2002 in Burkina Faso [13]. NmW disease outbreaks were reported in Niger during 2010 and 2011, both involving CC11 [14] These outbreaks were followed by another large epidemic caused by CC11 NmW in Burkina Faso during 2012 [15]. WGS analyses provided sufficient resolution to assign isolates from the meningitis belt to a long-standing regional
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