Students are most at risk of developing meningitis during their first weeks at university, before they have become accustomed to the infections bombarding them in their new environment, a leading expert in meningoccocal infections has warned.
Freshers living in halls with hundreds of other students, and going to parties, balls and "raves", may be exposed to the meningitis bacteria which is transmitted through coughs, sneezes and kissing.
The news emerged as meningitis cases appeared at York, Portsmouth and Bournemouth Universities, Southampton Institute and Brighton College of Technology, in addition to Cardiff University where two students have died.
A 23-year-old male access student died at Brighton College of Technology last Thursday of the same strain which killed the two female students in Cardiff. As The THES went to press, a total of 11 cases were confirmed, with dozens of students under hospital observation or receiving antibiotics and vaccinations to contain the spread of infections.
Keith Cartwright, group director of the Public Health Laboratory Service of the South West, said: "In universities, meningitis most frequently hits freshers in their first term. It takes some time to reinforce immunity when you are living with 700 people in a hall of residence."
Dr Cartwright stressed that it is not the extra spluttering associated with winter months that causes epidemics to flare up, but a susceptibility in some individuals to infection. His ongoing research suggests that incomplete recovery from a recent infection of the Influenza A virus plays a role.
"After flu, the average age of the cases rises and a French study shows there may be an increased severity of the disease," he added.
Dr Cartwright said that as the flu season had just started an increase in meningitis was not surprising.
Meningitis tends to strike young people at two distinct ages, under the age of one and in early adulthood, and the two groups are subject to a different set of risk factors. In babies, the incidence of the disease is partly linked to parental smoking and poverty, but in teenagers and young adults there is no connection between poverty, unhygienic living conditions and disease prevalence.
"We are probably looking at a random distribution among teenagers," Dr Cartwright said of the Cardiff incident.
Cardiff University has named the two students who died as Samantha Milroy, 19, a first-year pharmacy student, and Ann-Marie O'Connor, also 19, a first-year law student.
Some 2,200 cases of meningitis are reported in Britain each year, with 10 per cent resulting in death. Three out of four of the fatalities are accounted for by people under the age of 25.
In the UK, meningitis appears in two forms - group B and group C, with 70 per cent of reported cases in the B group, for which there is no vaccine.
Type C is most likely to cause "cluster" outbreaks, and is thought to be the only strain currently afflicting Cardiff.