Meningitis: the travel in 3D

Diving inside an infected blood vessel.

In this exclusive video, we take a 3D trip into the heart of a blood vessel attacked by a dangerous bacterium: meningococcus. This bacterium is carried by 5 to 10% of the population, often without any symptoms. But sometimes it crosses a key barrier, enters the bloodstream, and causes serious infections such as meningitis or septic shock.

Guillaume Dumenil, a researcher at the Institut Pasteur, and his team are studying how these bacteria colonize blood vessels.

Using advanced electron microscopy (very high resolution and 3D), they observed that meningococcus hides in small cavities formed inside the vessel walls. These shelters allow the bacteria to resist the blood flow: a key step called vascular colonization, the first step towards human disease.

The images and 3D reconstruction were produced by Manuel Majrouh at the Institut Pasteur's Ultrastructural Bioimaging Platform, directed by Adeline Mallet.

These observations pave the way for new therapeutic strategies to prevent and better treat these serious infections.

(video in french, english subtitles available translated by AI)