Infectious Disease

Party school ranking, campus Greek life increase meningococcal risk for college students

Evan Vega December 9, 2023

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December 08, 2023

2 min read

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Key takeaways:

Serogroup B meningococcal disease incidence was 4-fold higher in undergraduate students.
First-year students, those living in residence halls, and those affiliated with Greek life were also at an increased risk.

Researchers determined that first-year college students living on campus and/or affiliated with campus Greek life have an increased risk for meningococcal disease.

“Over the last decade there were a number of serogroup B meningococcal disease outbreaks at colleges and universities in the U.S. In addition, our team had previously documented an increased overall risk of serogroup B meningococcal disease in college students,” Lucy A.McNamara, PhD, MS, an epidemiologist in the CDC’s Meningitis and Vaccine Preventable Diseases Branch, told Healio.

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Weil LM, et al. Open Forum Infect Dis. 2023;doi:10.1093/ofid/ofad607.

“We wanted to better understand which college students were most at risk for meningococcal disease, both during outbreaks and otherwise,” she said.

McNamara said that they believed this information could help colleges make decisions about where to focus vaccination efforts during outbreaks and would also help adolescents, their families, and their providers decide whether to vaccinate the adolescents with a serogroup B meningococcal vaccine, which, she added, is recommended by Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

To assess which groups of college students could be at an increased risk for meningococcal disease, the researchers assessed all U.S. cases recorded between 2014 and 2017 among people aged 18 to 24 years. According to the study, the researchers determined and compared incidence rates between different student and non-student populations.

During the study period, 229 cases of meningococcal disease were reported. Of these cases, 120 were undergraduate students, 74% of which were serogroup B. The researchers found that serogroup B meningococcal disease incidence was four-fold higher in undergraduate students, 11.8-fold higher among first-year undergraduate students, and 8.6-fold higher among students living in residence halls vs. non-undergraduates.

They also determined that 54% of outbreak cases were among students affiliated with Greek life, yielding a 9.8-fold higher risk of disease during outbreaks compared with other students. Additionally, a significantly higher mean “party school ranking” (P < .05), as ranked by the website niche.com, was seen in colleges with either sporadic cases or outbreak cases when compared to colleges with no meningococcal disease cases.

“The information on which groups of adolescents are at greatest risk of serogroup B disease can be considered by clinicians, adolescents and their families when deciding whether an adolescent should receive a serogroup B meningococcal vaccine under shared clinical decision-making,” McNamara told Healio.

“Adolescents who are planning to attend a 4-year undergraduate institution, particularly those planning to live on campus or participate in Greek life, are at increased risk of serogroup B disease and may therefore be more likely to benefit from serogroup B vaccination,” she said.

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