SynthesisPloS one2015
Incidence, carriage and case-carrier ratios for meningococcal meningitis in the African meningitis belt: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Synthesis in PloS one, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Public health management of invasive meningococcal disease outbreaks: worldwide 1973-2018, a systematic review.BMC public health · 2024Pooled it
- Meningococcal carriage by age in the African meningitis belt: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Epidemiology and infection · 2019Pooled it
- Review
- Trends in bacterial meningitis in Guinea in the post-MenAfriVac era: a retrospective cross-sectional study (2021-2024).BMC infectious diseases · 2026Article
- Controlled Human Infection of Healthy Adults With LyophilizedOpen forum infectious diseases · 2026Article
- Fatal case of meningococcal meningitis in a child from rural Bhutan: A case report.Clinical case reports · 2024Article
- Impact of Meningococcal ACWY Vaccination Program during 2017-18 Epidemic, Western Australia, Australia.Emerging infectious diseases · 2024Article
- Review
- The meningitis outbreak returns to Niger: Concern, efforts, challenges, and recommendations.Immunity, inflammation and disease · 2023Article
- Using Clinical Vignettes to Understand the Complexity of Diagnosing Type 1 Diabetes in Sub-Saharan Africa.Research and reports in tropical medicine · 2023Review
- Knowledge, beliefs and practices regarding prevention of bacterial meningitis in Burkina Faso, 5 years after MenAfriVac mass campaigns.PloS one · 2021Article
- Recent changes in the epidemiology of Neisseria meningitidis serogroup W across the world, current vaccination policy choices and possible future strategies.Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics · 2019Review
- Design, synthesis, and structural elucidation of novel NmeNANAS inhibitors for the treatment of meningococcal infection.PloS one · 2019Article
- Compartmental models for seasonal hyperendemic bacterial meningitis in the African meningitis belt.Epidemiology and infection · 2018Article
- Atmospheric Dust, Early Cases, and Localized Meningitis Epidemics in the African Meningitis Belt: An Analysis Using High Spatial Resolution Data.Environmental health perspectives · 2018Article
- Increase of Neisseria meningitidis W:cc11 invasive disease in Chile has no correlation with carriage in adolescents.PloS one · 2018Article
- The association between respiratory tract infection incidence and localised meningitis epidemics: an analysis of high-resolution surveillance data from Burkina Faso.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- Standard operating procedures improve acute neurologic care in a sub-Saharan African setting.Neurology · 2017Article
- Whole genome sequencing reveals within-host genetic changes in paired meningococcal carriage isolates from Ethiopia.BMC genomics · 2017Article
- Temporally Varying Relative Risks for Infectious Diseases: Implications for Infectious Disease Control.Epidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2017Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundTo facilitate the interpretation of meningococcal meningitis epidemiology in the "African meningitis belt", we aimed at obtaining serogroup-specific pooled estimates of incidence, carriage and case-carrier ratios for meningococcal meningitis in the African meningitis belt and describe their variations across the endemic, hyperendemic and epidemic context.
methodsWe conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies reporting serogroup-specific meningococcal meningitis monthly incidence and carriage in the same population and time period. Epidemiological contexts were defined as endemic (wet season, no epidemic), hyperendemic (dry season, no epidemic), and epidemic (dry season, epidemic).
findingsEight studies reporting a total of eighty pairs of serogroup-specific meningococcal meningitis incidence and carriage estimates were included in this review. For serogroup A, changes associated with the transition from endemic to hyperendemic incidence and from hyperendemic to epidemic incidence were 15-fold and 120-fold respectively. Changes in carriage prevalence associated with both transitions were 1-fold and 30-fold respectively. For serogroup W and X, the transition from endemic to hyperendemic incidence involved a 4-fold and 1•1-fold increase respectively. Increases in carriage prevalence for the later transition were 7-fold and 1•7-fold respectively. No data were available for the hyperendemic-epidemic transition for these serogroups. Our findings suggested that the regular seasonal variation in serogroup A meningococcal meningitis incidence between the rainy and the dry season could be mainly driven by seasonal change in the ratio of clinical cases to subclinical infections. In contrast appearance of epidemic incidences is related to a substantial increase in transmission and colonisation and to lesser extent with changes in the case-carrier ratio.
conclusionSeasonal change in the rate of progression to disease given carriage together with variations in frequency of carriage transmission should be considered in models attempting to capture the epidemiology of meningococcal meningitis and mainly to predict meningitis epidemics in the African meningitis belt.
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