“Our study is important because it identified a relatively small group of college students at a higher risk for meningococcal disease who are easily accessible and could be targeted for immunization,” the study reported.

David S. Rosenthal ’59, director of Harvard’s University Health Services (UHS), said that for the past two years UHS has mailed notices encouraging incoming first-years to receive the meningitis immunization. He estimates that half of the incoming class receives the shot.

Rosenthal said he believed that the attention generation by this week’s study on menegitis will likely increase the numbers of incoming first-years who are vaccinated against the disease.

However, this week’s study and the previous recommendations stop short of suggesting that all incoming first-years should be vaccinated. They note that even with the increased rate of infection among first-years living in dorms, vaccination of the student population is not cost-effective given how few cases of meningitis actually occur.

According to this week’s study, out of the almost 600,000 college first-year students who lived in dorms nationwide during the 1998-1999 school year, only 30 contracted bacterial meningitis.

The vaccination has not been added to the list of those required of incoming college students by Massachusetts because the current vaccination does not prevent the vaccinated individual from being a carrier of meningitis and possibly infecting others according to Bela T. Matyas, medical director of the epidemiology program at the Mass. Department of Public Health.

Instead, the vaccine only works to prevent the particular individual from getting the symptoms of the disease.