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Last Updated: 2001-08-07 16:00:28 EDT (Reuters Health)

By Suzanne Rostler

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – College freshmen who live in dormitories are more than three times as likely as other college students to develop meningococcal disease, researchers said Tuesday.

However, widespread use of the quadrivalent meningococcal polysaccharide vaccine could cut rates of meningococcal disease in college students by about two thirds, they report in the August 8th issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.

"The bottom line is that we found, overall, [that] college students did not have an increased risk of meningococcal disease but that college freshmen living in dorms had an elevated risk and could reduce the risk through safe and effective vaccination," coinvestigator Dr. Nancy E. Rosenstein, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, told Reuters Health.

It would be premature to suggest changes in living conditions among college students, the authors say, since the study results did not reveal why dormitory living is associated with a higher risk.

To determine how frequently meningococcal disease occurs among US college students, CDC researcher Dr. Michael G. Bruce and colleagues reviewed national data gathered from 50 state health departments and 231 college health centers over 1 year.

They found that the incidence of meningococcal disease among freshmen living in dormitories was 5.1 per 100,000. In comparison, the researchers calculated, there were 0.7 cases per 100,000 undergraduates and 1.4 per 100,000 nonstudents 18 to 23 years in the general population.

Overall, 96 cases of meningococcal disease were identified among college students. Among students whose medical information was available to researchers, 68% of cases could have been prevented with the currently available vaccine, the researchers estimate.

College students are not the only group at risk for meningococcal disease for whom the meningococcal vaccine could provide protection, according to a second report in JAMA. Dr. Lee H. Harrison, from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and colleagues found that nearly one quarter of 295 cases reported in Maryland over 10 years occurred in 15- to 24-year-olds.

Use of the vaccine might have prevented infection in 82.8% of people ages 15 to 24 years, in 68.1% of children younger than 15 years, and in 76.8% of adults 25 years and older, Dr. Harrison's group concludes.

"Taken together, these studies demonstrate that meningococcal disease in [college-aged individuals] is severe, and a targeted approach of immunizing college freshmen who live in dormitories may be the most efficient way to make an impact on meningococcal disease," Dr. Jay Wenger from the World Health Organization, in Geneva, writes in an accompanying editorial.

JAMA 2001;286:688-699; 720-721.