Dynamics of community-acquired meningitis syndrome outbreaks in southern France

In southern France, cases of community-acquired meningitis syndrome (CAM) are typically clustered as outbreaks with determinants which remain unknown. This 61-month retrospective investigation in Nîmes and Marseille university hospital laboratories, yielded 2,209/20,779 (10.63%) documented CAM cases caused by 62 different micro-organisms, represented by seasonal viral etiologies (78.8%), including Enterovirus, Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV), and Varicella-Zoster Virus (VZV; 1,620/2,209 = 73.4%). Multi correspondence analysis revealed an association of infection with age and sex, with the risk of infection being relatively higher in young men, as confirmed by Fisher’s exact test (p < 10−3). Bacterial meningitis accounted for 20% of cases, mostly caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae (27.4% of cases), Neisseria meningitidis (12.5%), and Haemophilus influenzae (9.5%) with bacteria/virus coinfection (0.9%), and only six cases of documented fungal meningitis. In total, 62.6% of cases, of which 88.7% were undocumented, arose from 10 outbreaks. 33.2% of undocumented cases were aged >60 years compared to 19.2% of documented cases (p < 0.001), and viral infection was more common in the summer (87.5%) compared to other seasons (72.3%; p < 0.001). Outbreaks most often started in Nîmes and moved eastward toward Marseille at a speed of ~9 km/day, and these dynamics significantly correlated with atmospheric temperature, especially during summer outbreaks. In particular, the incidence of Enterovirus-driven outbreaks correlated with temperature, revealing correlation coefficients of 0.64 in Nîmes and 0.72 in Marseille, and its occurrence in Marseille lagged that in Nîmes by 1–2 weeks. Tracing the dynamics of CAM outbreak during this retrospective investigation in southern France yielded a speed of displacement that correlated with the variation in temperature between both cities, and these results provide clues for the next occurrence of undocumented outbreaks.

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