Neisseria meningitidis Urethritis

FOR years, the sine qua non of gonococcal infection in the male patient has been a thick, purulent urethral discharge and evidence of Gramnegative intracellular diplococci on smear examination. Indeed, these findings are used for presumptively diagnosing gonorrhea in males. Similarly for the female patient, an oxidase-positive colony that shows Gram-negative diplococci by microscopic examination is often accepted as a gonococcus without further investigation. As early as 1939, attention was drawn to microorganisms that could invalidate the diagnosis of gonorrhea by the smear method. DeBord 1 indicated such for Mima polymorpha (Moraxella osloensis) , and in 1942 Carpenter and Charles 2 reported the isolation of Neisseria meningitidis from gonococcal-like discharge in seven male patients. Little attention has been paid to N meningitidis until recent years. Since 1971, there have been reports of 80 patients in whom N meningitidis was isolated from the urethra, cervix, or anal canal. 3,4 This article reports