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

doi:10.1128/JCM.39.4.1235-1240.2001

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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. Maiden²^,^*

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 pharyngealswabs of asymptomatic carriers can be achieved by several approacheswhich provide different levels of discrimination. A total of 45gram negative, oxidase-positive diplococcus strains isolated from15 individuals with meningococcal disease and 30 of their familycontacts were examined by three approaches: serological typing,multilocus enzyme electrophoresis (MLEE), and multilocus sequencetyping (MLST). For 10 of the 15 patient and contact groups, allof the isolates were confirmed as meningococci, and the bacteriaobtained from the patients and contacts, including their motheror principal caregiver in the case of children, were indistinguishableby all three methods. In the remaining five groups the isolatesfrom the patients were distinct from those recovered from thecontacts, and in three examples, in two separate groups, the contactswere shown by MLST to be carrying strains of Neisseria lactamica.The data obtained from the three techniques were consistent, althoughcomplete serological typing was possible for only a minority ofisolates. Both MLEE and MLST established the genetic relationshipsof the isolates and identified members of known hypervirulentlineages, but MLST was faster than MLEE and had the additionaladvantages that it could be performed on noninfective materialdistributed by mail and that the results from different laboratoriescould be compared via the internet (http://mlst.zoo.ox.ac.uk).

^* 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, UnitedKingdom. Phone: 44-1865-271284. Fax: 44-1865-271284. E-mail: martin.maiden{at}zoo.ox.ac.uk.

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