However, there has been no report on the effect of Hib locus amplification in Japan. We examined 24 Hib strains from Japanese children with invasive diseases due to Hib. Although all strains showed the same capb sequence, Southern blot analysis showed that four strains (16.7%) harbored multiple copies (more than two) of the capb locus. Careful analysis of the selleck chemicals llc locus in circulating Hib strains is necessary now that the Hib vaccine has been introduced into Japan. Hib occasionally causes invasive bacterial diseases such as meningitis, epiglottitis and sepsis, especially among young children.

Hib conjugate vaccines, which consist of capsule polysaccharide conjugated with carrier protein, are very effective and safe. Since the Hib conjugate vaccine was introduced in Europe and America in the 1990s, the incidence of invasive Hib disease has decreased dramatically in many countries (1). However,

despite the efficacy of the Hib vaccine, an increased number of cases of the rare invasive Hib diseases (i.e. cases of true vaccine failure) have now been reported in Europe in fully vaccinated children (2–5). Although possibly contributory host factors such as lower avidity of the anti-Hib antibody are known to occur (6, 7), amplification of the capsulation locus may also have contributed to vaccine failure (8, 9). Type b polysaccharide capsules, polymers of PRP, are cell-surface Inhibitor Library high throughput components that serve as major virulence factors against

host defense mechanisms. The genes involved in Hib capsule expression are found within the capb locus, an 18-kb DNA segment of the Silibinin chromosome (10). Most invasive Hib strains contain a partial duplication of the capb locus which consists of one intact copy of the locus, and a second copy with a 1.2-kb deletion region containing the bexA gene and an IS1016 insertion element that flanks the locus (10). Polysaccharide capsule production relates to the number of copies of the locus (11). Recently, Cerquetti et al. reported that amplification of the capb locus to as many as three to five copies is associated with vaccine failure (8, 9). In addition, Schouls et al. found two variants of the capsular gene cluster, designated type I and type II, which were assessed by considerable sequence divergence in the hcsA and hcsB genes of the capb locus. They found that type I strains carry approximately twice as much capsular polysaccharide on the cell surface as type II strains (12). In Japan, the Hib conjugate vaccine was licensed in January 2007, and introduced in December 2008; however, the vaccination plan has not yet been fully implemented. Although 55% of bacterial meningitis cases in children in Japan were caused by Hib (13), there has been no national survey of strains isolated from patients with invasive Hib diseases including meningitis.