Characterization of Neisseria meningitidis strains causing disease in complement-deficient and complement-sufficient patients.

Serotyping and serosubtyping of meningococci showed no difference between isolates from 44 complement-deficient persons and from 50 complement-sufficient persons with meningococcal disease. Multilocus enzyme electrophoretic typing of the meningococci revealed 54 electrophoretic types that were equally distributed among isolates from complement-deficient and complement-sufficient patients. Analysis of strains isolated from eight complement-deficient persons with 11 recurrences of meningococcal disease showed that one strain was identical to the strain previously isolated from the same individual. Our results indicate that there are no differences between the clonal distributions of strains infecting complement-deficient and complement-sufficient patients. Most recurrences were infections caused by different strains.