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Journal of Clinical Microbiology, April 2001, p. 1235-1240, Vol. 39, No. 4
0095-1137/01/$04.00+0   DOI: 10.1128/JCM.39.4.1235-1240.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.

Phenotypic and Genotypic Approaches to Characterization of Isolates of Neisseria meningitidis from Patients and Their Close Family Contacts

G. Tzanakaki,¹ R. Urwin,² M. Musilek,³ P. Kriz,³ J. Kremastinou,¹ A. Pangalis,⁴ C. C. Blackwell,⁴ and M. C. J. Maiden^2,*

National Meningococcal Reference Laboratory, National School of Public Health,¹ and Agia Sophia Children's Hospital,⁴ Athens, Greece; Wellcome Trust Centre for the Epidemiology of Infectious Disease, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, England²; National Reference Laboratory for Meningococcal Infections, NIPH, Prague, Czech Republic³; and Department of Medical Microbiology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland⁵

Received 27 October 2000/Returned for modification 1 December 2000/Accepted 12 January 2001

Characterization of isolates of Neisseria meningitidis obtained from patients with meningococcal disease or from pharyngeal swabs of asymptomatic carriers can be achieved by several approaches which provide different levels of discrimination. A total of 45 gram negative, oxidase-positive diplococcus strains isolated from 15 individuals with meningococcal disease and 30 of their family contacts were examined by three approaches: serological typing, multilocus enzyme electrophoresis (MLEE), and multilocus sequence typing (MLST). For 10 of the 15 patient and contact groups, all of the isolates were confirmed as meningococci, and the bacteria obtained from the patients and contacts, including their mother or principal caregiver in the case of children, were indistinguishable by all three methods. In the remaining five groups the isolates from the patients were distinct from those recovered from the contacts, and in three examples, in two separate groups, the contacts were shown by MLST to be carrying strains of Neisseria lactamica. The data obtained from the three techniques were consistent, although complete serological typing was possible for only a minority of isolates. Both MLEE and MLST established the genetic relationships of the isolates and identified members of known hypervirulent lineages, but MLST was faster than MLEE and had the additional advantages that it could be performed on noninfective material distributed by mail and that the results from different laboratories could be compared via the internet (http://mlst.zoo.ox.ac.uk).

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^* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Wellcome Trust Centre for the Epidemiology of Infectious Disease, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, South Parks Rd., Oxford OX1 3FY, United Kingdom. Phone: 44-1865-271284. Fax: 44-1865-271284. E-mail: martin.maiden{at}zoo.ox.ac.uk.

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Journal of Clinical Microbiology, April 2001, p. 1235-1240, Vol. 39, No. 4
0095-1137/01/$04.00+0   DOI: 10.1128/JCM.39.4.1235-1240.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.

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