Meningitis risk higher in dorms Study: College freshmen more likely to get disease

College freshmen who live in dorms are 3.6 times more likely thanother students to get life-threatening bacterial meningitis, a studyhas found.

Each year, between 100 and 125 college students get meningococcaldisease, which typically causes meningitis or blood poisoning.Between 5 and 15 students die from the disease, which also can causepermanent brain damage, hearing loss and kidney failure, and lead tolimb amputation.

The study found that undergraduates as a whole were less likely toget meningococcal disease than nonstudents. But the risk is higheramong freshmen in dorms probably because they live in close quarters,the study found. Meningococcal bacteria spread through the air and bydirect contact, such as kissing or drinking from the same glass.

The study is published in today's Journal of the American MedicalAssociation. It was conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Controland Prevention and American College Health Association.

Widespread use of a meningococcal vaccine could "substantiallydecrease" students' risk of contracting the disease, researcherswrote.

However, the vaccine is expensive--about $75 per dose--and manydoctors' offices do not stock it. Moreover, the vaccine lasts onlythree to five years and does not protect against all strains of thebacteria. The study found the vaccine could have prevented up to 68percent of the 79 cases examined.

Because meningococcal disease is so rare, immunization is not cost-effective to society as a whole, according to recommendations lastyear by the federal government's Advisory Committee on ImmunizationPractices. Vaccinating all freshmen who live in dorms would prevent15 to 30 cases and 1 to 3 deaths each year, at a cost of up to $1.8million per case prevented and $20 million per life saved, thecommittee said. The committee instead recommended that freshmen andtheir parents simply be told about the disease and the benefits ofvaccination.

Authors of the new study said a dollars-and-cents equation "doesnot take into consideration disruption of campus life, public anxietyand private tragedy resulting from a case."

An outbreak can create a campuswide panic, said Dr. DavidLawrance, director of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaignstudent health clinic. "It's a nightmare," Lawrance said. "Everyoneis scared to death."

During the 1991-92 school year, there were seven cases and threedeaths at the U. of I. Although the university offers the vaccine forno charge, fewer than 25 percent of freshmen get the shot. "Like alot of things having to do with mortality, [meningitis] is not on an18-year-old's mind," Lawrance said.