Use of antigenic markers and genomic fingerprinting to study epidemiology of meningococcal disease.

The usefulness of the restriction enzyme fingerprinting was investigated for epidemiological studies of meningococci isolated from three patients who fell ill in meningococcal disease within a short period of time. The strains belonged to serogroup B and had similar serotype patterns. Epidemiological connections could not be excluded but genomic fingerprinting showed that the strains were probably of different origin. It is concluded that genomic fingerprinting is a potential and sensitive tool for epidemiological studies.