Bacterial meningitis keeps falling
Vaccinations cut cases nearly one-third over past decade
By Nathan Seppa
Just a few decades ago, a pediatrician getting a frantic phone call from a parent whose child was running a high fever would immediately consider bacterial meningitis. Today, that diagnosis is unlikely: Vaccination against meningitis-causing bacteria has slashed incidence of the deadly brain inflammation, a nationwide survey shows.
Researchers scanned data from more than 17 million people nationwide and found that bacterial meningitis incidence in the United States had fallen by 31 percent from 1998 to 2007, researchers report in the May 26 New England Journal of Medicine.
“For people taking care of kids since the 1980s, the world of meningitis has completely changed in the United States — and it’s because of two vaccines,” says Matthew Davis, a pediatrician at the University of Michigan Medical School who wasn’t part of the new study. Parents know these as Hib, the vaccine for Haemophilus influenzae type B, and PCV, for Streptococcus pneumoniae. These two microbes were historically among the chief causes of bacterial meningitis.