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Genomic Meningococcal Load in the Nasopharynx of Children with Meningococcal Disease
Thomas W Bourke1, James P McKenna, Peter V Coyle
1From the *Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children, Belfast, United Kingdom; †Regional Virus Laboratory, Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, Belfast; and ‡Centre for Infection and Immunity, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, United Kingdom.
Abstract:
This study demonstrates the feasibility of using quantitative real time PCR to measure genomic bacterial load in the nasopharynx of children with invasive meningococcal disease and shows that these loads are exceptionally high (median 6.6 × 10(5) (range 1.2 × 10(5)-1.1 × 10(8)) genome copies of Neisseria meningitidis per swab).

