Neisseria meningitidis ST-11 clonal complex bearing capsule serogroups B, C, or W in Brazil

Invasive serogroup W Neisseria meningitidis (MenW) in Ontario, Canada shows potential clonal replacement during the period January 1, 2009 – June 30, 2016

“…This was in contrast to the findings reported from South America with most MenW:2a ST-11 cases occurring in young children. For example, in Argentina, 63% of MenW:2a ST-11 cases were in children less than nine years old (18); in Chile, 47% of cases were in children less than five years old (25); while in Brazil, the average age was 15 years (26). In England and Wales, the increase in disease due to the ST-11 MenW strain was noticed in all age groups (24,27).…”

Genomic Investigation Reveals Highly Conserved, Mosaic, Recombination Events Associated with Capsular Switching among InvasiveNeisseria meningitidisSerogroup W Sequence Type (ST)-11 Strains

“…Significance of the second recombination from Y cc23 could be to offset any fitness cost associated with the first (W cc22) recombination event. This is supported by the observation that W cc11 represents a rare example where a capsular switch strain has persisted for decades and spread to several continents, as compared with a majority of capsular switch strains that do not persist in the long term ( Harrison et al 2010 ; Barroso et al 2013 ; He et al 2014 ; Zhu et al 2015 ). Dominance of single cps allelic type is consistent with the “genocloud” concept in which a set of mutually co-adapted sets of genes persist despite presence of a few, mostly transient, escape variants ( Gupta et al 1996 ; Zhu et al 2001 ).…”

Three Outbreak-causingNeisseria meningitidis SerogroupC Clones, Brazil1

“…Some of these clones, namely, cc11 and cc32, have undergone capsular switching. For instance, the 2–2:P1.5–1,10–8:F3–6:ST-7816 (a single locus variant of ST-11) clone from 2009 was found to express a serogroup W capsule ( 10 ), and the 3–79:P1.7–1,1:F5–1:ST-639 clone was previously demonstrated to belong to serogroup B ( 3 ).…”