Carriage rate of Neisseria meningitidis among healthy population with bacterium culturing and real time fluorescence quantitative polymerase chain reaction

Objective To understand the carrying status of Neisseria meningitidis among healthy people in selected areas of Hebei province, and evaluate the performance of real time fluorescence quantitative polymerase chain reaction (FQ-PCR) in N. meningitidis carriage detection as the supplement to conventional culturing. Methods Throat swabs were taken from 577 healthy people selected by stratified cluster random sampling based on age, and the isolation of N.meningitidis was conducted with both culturing and FQ-PCR. Results Totally 18 strains of N.meningitidis were isolated from the throat swabs (3.12%), in which 9 were unspecified strains, 3 were serogroup B strains, 3 were W135 strains, 2 were X strains and 1 was C strain. Totally 46 samples were detected to be positive by FQ-PCR (7.97%). The most common serogroup was B (13), followed by W135 (12), unspecified (11), X (7) and C (3). Conclusion Variety of N.meningitidis serogroups were detected among healthy carriers in surveyed areas with both culturing and FQ-PCR, but the detection rate of FQ-PCR was significantly higher than that of conventional bacterium culturing.