Tools to curb meningococcal outbreaks

Outbreaks of meningococcal disease could be dramatically reduced thanks to research being conducted by the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Diagnostics based at Brisbane's Queensland University of Technology.

Paul Lucas, Minister for Innovation and Information Economy, has presented the CRC for Diagnostics with $100,000 to fund research to produce methods to track and manage meningococcal disease.

"The funding, part of a $300,000 three year state government grant, is for a world-first DNA technique that aims to identify if the meningococcal bacteria found in two or more patients is a one-off event or if it's the beginning of an outbreak," Mr Lucas said.

"The methods being developed here at the CRC will use a software program to pick out a number of individual DNA sequence differences in a bacterium sample from one person, and look for a match in samples from other people," Mr Lucas said.

"This will be quicker, faster and cheaper than the current method of screening entire DNA sequences."