CAMPUS LIFE: Monitoring Meningitis Outbreaks.

Facing a rare instance of simultaneous and growing meningococcal disease outbreaks on campuses – on opposite coasts, no less – college administrators are taking what may be unprecedented vaccination steps, issuing precautions and hoping this unusual situation doesn’t get much worse.

The meningococcal vaccines licensed in the U.S. do not fully protect against the potentially lethal serogroup B strain that’s infected nearly a dozen people on three campuses. But the unusual size and length of the outbreak at Princeton University, which confirmed its eighth case since March on Friday, has prompted federal approval to distribute a vaccine there called Bexsero that is imported from Europe.

“This is highly unusual – I’m not sure completely unprecedented,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doctor Amanda Cohn said in a call with reporters Monday. “We needed to do something to prevent additional cases.”

The CDC will recommend that all Princeton undergraduates, graduate students who live in the dorms, and any individuals with functional and anatomic asplenia (including sickle cell disease) or late complement component deficiencies receive the vaccine.

I am asplenic, the result of a youthful altercation, and have had the regular meningitis vaccine, so I follow this with some interest.