title: Evolutionary epidemiology of Neisseria meningitidis strains in Belarus compared to other European countries.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Meningococcal infections are major causes of death in children globally. In Belarus, the incidence of cases and fatality rate of meningococcal infections are low and comparable to the levels in other European countries.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  In the present study, the molecular and epidemiological traits of Neisseria meningitidis strains circulating in Belarus were characterized and compared to isolates from other European countries.
  
  
  METHODS
  Twenty N. meningitidis strains isolated from patients (n = 13) and healthy contacts (n = 7) during 2006–2012 in Belarus were selected for multilocus sequence typing (MLST), genosubtyping and FetA typing. TheSTs of the Belarusian strains were phylogenetically compared to the STs of 110 selected strains from 22 other European countries.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Overall, eleven different genosubtypes were observed, there were seven variants of variable region of the fet Agene detected. The majority of the STs (95%) found in Belarus were novel and allthose were submitted to the Neisseria MLST database for assignment. Several newly discovered alleles of fumC (allele 451) and gdh (allele 560 and 621) appeared to be descendants of alleles which are widespread in Europe, and single aroE alleles (602 and 603) occurred as a result of separate evolution.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  N. meningitidis strains circulating in Belarus are heterogeneous and include sequence types, possibly, locally evolved in Belarus as well as representatives of widespread European hyperinvasive clonal complexes.
authors.affiliation: Republic Research and Practical Centre for Epidemiology and Microbiology 23 Filimonova street Minsk Belarus.
authors.forename: Leonid P
authors.initials: LP
authors.lastname: Titov
authors.forename: Kanstantsin V
authors.initials: KV
authors.lastname: Siniuk
authors.forename: Kurt K
authors.initials: KK
authors.lastname: Wollenberg
authors.forename: Magnus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Unemo
authors.forename: Sara Thulin
authors.initials: ST
authors.lastname: Hedberg
authors.forename: Slavyana E
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Glazkova
authors.forename: Fiodar A
authors.initials: FA
authors.lastname: Lebedzeu
authors.forename: Alena S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Nosava
authors.forename: Volcha O
authors.initials: VO
authors.lastname: Yanovich
authors.forename: Sadhia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Xirasagar
authors.forename: Darrell
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Hurt
authors.forename: Yentram
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Huyen
mesh_terms: D000483:Alleles; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D006801:Humans; D058885:Multilocus Sequence Typing; D009345:Neisseria meningitidis / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics*; D010802:Phylogeny; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D002094:Republic of Belarus
keywords: Belarus; Neisseria meningitidis; clonal complex (CC); evolution; multilocus sequence typing (MLST); sequence type (ST)