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Clinical and Diagnostic Laboratory Immunology, July 2004, p. 806-807, Vol. 11, No. 4
1071-412X/04/$08.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/CDLI.11.4.806-807.2004
Copyright © 2004, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Departments of Medical Microbiology and Immunology,1 Internal Medicine, Meander Medical Centre, Amersfoort,2 Department of Internal Medicine, University Medical Centre Nijmegen, Nijmegen,3 Department of Medical Microbiology, University Medical Centre Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands4
Received 9 February 2004/ Returned for modification 1 March 2004/ Accepted 27 April 2004
In a recent report, our group presented clinical research data supporting the role of mannose-binding lectin (MBL) deficiency in susceptibility to meningococcal disease (W. A. Bax, O. J. J. Cluysenaer, A. K. M. Bartelink, P. C. Aerts, R. A. B. Ezekowitz, and H. van Dijk, Lancet 354:1094-1095, 1999). This association was reported earlier by Hibberd et al. (M. L. Hibberd, M. Sumiya, J. A. Summerfield, R. Booy, M. Levin, and the Meningococcal Research Group, Lancet 353:1049-1053, 1999) but was not based on family data. Our study included three members of one family who had acquired meningococcal meningitis in early adulthood. The objective of the present study was to investigate whether the genotypes of the MBL gene in this family, analyzed by PCR, correlate with MBL concentrations. We found that genotype variants in the MBL gene and promoter region match the low functional MBL levels (<0.25 µg of equivalents/ml) in the sera of the three patients in this family and that a significant correlation between genotype MBL deficiency and meningococcal disease existed.
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