Meningitis: causes, symptoms, and treatment overview

Meningitis Letter

Dear:

We are excited to have you as a student at Neisserian College and seek ways to make your educational experience here as rewarding as possible. We recognize that as a college student you are now a young adult and want to give you some important medical information regarding life at college.

While schools do everything they can to protect their students' health, occasionally students will acquire an infectious disease. In most cases these illnesses are easily managed, but one disease that surfaces in college, especially in dormitories, can have devastating consequences. Since it can be avoided by a simple vaccination we want to offer that choice to you.

The disease is called meningitis, an infection of the fluid found around the spinal cord. There are several forms of it. Some are viral, and while they will make the person very sick, generally people recover from those forms. However, some are bacterial. The bacterial forms can be devastating, causing high fever, seizures, deafness, impaired ability to learn, brain damage, and in about 15% of cases among young adults, death.

While bacterial meningitis is not common, it is contagious, spread by coughing, sneezing and kissing. Some forms can be spread just by living in close proximity to someone who has the illness. While those who have been exposed can take antibiotics and prevent the disease, this is only effective once the illness has been identified. Because of this, one case of bacterial meningitis can put a significant number of other students at risk. For reasons not quite clear, freshmen seem to be more at risk although students of any age can get bacterial meningitis.

Fortunately, vaccines have been developed that can protect people from acquiring bacterial meningitis. There are several varieties of bacterial meningitis, including Haemophilus influenzae type b (called "Hib"), and four strains of N. meningitidis. Students vaccinated with the current vaccination, called meningococcal polysaccharide vaccine, will dramatically reduce their risk of catching bacterial meningitis.

Even though bacterial meningitis is not a common disease, being in college puts you at a higher than average risk for the disease, which can make a person very sick, very quickly. The symptoms, which include nausea and vomiting, confusion and sleepiness, and sensitivity to bright lights, may take one to two days to develop, but may develop over a matter of hours. Seizures are common with bacterial meningitis.

We don't want to sound alarmist about this class of diseases. Many of you were vaccinated for Hib as infants. However, vaccinations tend to wear off over years, and you may not be protected any longer from this form, and most people have not been vaccinated with the quadrivariant vaccine, which offers the greatest protection. The disease is not widespread on college campuses. Only about one in 100,000 will develop this kind of disease. Unfortunately, however, the incidence may be as much as 23 times higher among college students living in dormitories, and the risk is elevated for all college students.

Although the disease is most common from November to February, it can occur at any time, and the most effective way to avoid it is to be vaccinated for it. In addition to protecting yourself, you will be protecting your friends at school, because if you do not catch this disease you cannot pass it on to someone else. So, vaccination will serve as both a personal and a community protection. Although this vaccine is highly effective, occasionally it does not give a person full immunity, and that person is further protected when his or her friends have been vaccinated.

You may wonder why the university is encouraging you to consider vaccination for a disease that is not really terribly common. The reason is that when someone does get the disease, the effects can be devastating even for the majority who survive, because the infection spreads rapidly from the spinal cord to the brain.

There is some cost involved with this vaccine. Its retail cost would be $54, but the university is prepared to offer this vaccine at cost to the students, or $20. Further, we will add it to your health services fee so it can be included with your financial aid or other sources for college funding. We want to do everything can to help our students avoid this potentially devastating disease.