Meningitis Rate Is Dropping in U.S. CDC Researchers Say
Pneumococcal Vaccine Is Helping to Lower Meningitis Rate May 25,
2011 -- Cases of bacterial meningitis continue to decline in the
U.S., with incidence falling by almost a third over the last
decade, the CDC says. The latest drop is being attributed in
part to the introduction of the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine,
which protects children from a leading cause of bacterial
meningitis, Streptococcus pneumoniae. It follows an even bigger
decline in cases over the previous decade, which saw the
introduction of a vaccine targeting Haemophilus influenza type B
(Hib). Between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s, bacterial meningitis
cases in the U.S. dropped by 55%. The CDC report appears in
tomorrow's New England Journal of Medicine. "The good news is
that this very serious infection is now a lot less common than
it was," CDC chief of bacterial and respiratory diseases Cynthia
Whitney, MD, MPH, tells WebMD. "But we want people to know that
this disease does still occur