van der Ende A.: Bacterial meningitis

The research on Bacterial Meningitis benefits strongly from the Netherlands Reference Laboratory for Bacterial Meningitis (NRLBM; head: Dr. A. van der Ende) located at the Department of Medical Microbiology, AMC. The NRLBM gives access to a collection of over 10,000 bacterial isolates form patients and carriers and of human clinical specimen (liquor and serum). In addition, basic patients’ data like age, gender, date of hospital admission and place of living are available but due to cooperative studies with dr. D. van de Beek (Department of Neurology, AMC) patients’ genetic material and data like clinical features and outcome are available of about 1500 patients.
We study the molecular epidemiology and population structure of the main pathogens causing meningitis, Neisseria meningitidis and Streptococcus pneumoniae, and of Chlamydia species causing respiratory infections and sexual transmitted disease. In addition, we study the pathogenesis of meningococcal and invasive pneumococcal disease. We are particularly interested in the bacterial stress response and its regulation by small RNAs (ribo-regulation) in conjunction with alternative sigma factors like sigmaE. In collaborative studies with Dr. D. van de Beek (Department of Neurology, AMC) we investigate clinical aspects of bacterial meningitis as well correlation between clinical features, outcome and host and bacterial factors.

Theme: Infection and Immunity


This research group participates in CINIMA