Meningococcal disease

Paper and authors: The incidence and mortality for meningococcal disease associated with area deprivation: an ecological study of hospital episode statistics - Heyderman RS, Ben-Shlomo Y, Brennan CA, Somerset M

This paper sets out to determine whether incidence, mortality and case fatality for meningococcal disease (MD) relates to area deprivation, and whether it has changed over time.

The analysis looked at the population of children under 5 years old with MD over two time periods; 1995-99 and 1991-94. The association between incidence, mortality and age deprivation quintiles was assessed using Poisson regression.

The researchers found that the incidence of MD and mortality are socially patterned, and that further investigation is needed in the area of case fatality.