Symptomatic Female Genital Tract Infections Due to Neisseria meningitidis in Athens, Greece

Abstract

Neisseria meningitidis is considered as an obligate human pathogen and can cause life-threatening diseases like meningitis and/or septicaemia. Occasionally, it can be recovered from infections outside the bloodstream or central nervous system, like respiratory, ocular, joint, urogenital or other unusual sites. Herein, we present two rare cases of female genital infections due to N. meningitidis within a two-year period (2019–2020), identified as serogroup B (MenB) and Y (MenY), respectively. Genotypic analysis for PorA, FetA and MLST revealed the following characteristics: MenB: 7-12, 14, F5-36, 1572cc and MenY: 5-1,10-1, F4-5, 23cc, respectively. Such unusual presentations should alert the clinicians and microbiologists not to exclude N. meningitidis from routine diagnosis and the need of early detection. This is the first report in Greece, and, to our knowledge, in Europe since 2005 describing meningococcal female genital infections.

Meningococcal Infection: A Brief Review and Personal Observations of the Generalized Form of the Disease in Three-Month-Old Twins

“…However, today the antenatal and intranatal transmission of the infection deserve special attention, the realization of which is possible under the conditions of meningococcal contamination of the pregnant woman's genital tract [16,17,18]. In recent years, there have been increasing reports of female genitalia meningococcal infection [19] and male meningococcal urethritis in different countries worldwide [20,21]. In fact, these cases require caution in terms of possible generalization of the infection.…”