Utilization of a molecular serotyping method for Salmonella enterica in a routine laboratory in Alberta Canada.
Salmonella is one of the most common enteric pathogens related to foodborne illness. Alberta's Provincial Laboratory for Public Health (ProvLab) provides Outbreak and Surveillance support by performing serotyping. The Check&Trace Salmonella™ (CTS) assay (Check-Points, Netherlands), a commercial DNA microarray system, can determine the serotype designation of a Salmonella isolate with automated interpretation. Here we evaluate 1028 Salmonella isolates of human clinical or environmental sources in Alberta, Canada with the CTS assay. CTS was able to assign a serovar to 98.7% of the most frequently occurring human clinical strains in Alberta (82.5% overall), and 71.7% of isolates which were inconclusive by conventional methods. There was 99.7% concordance in environmental isolates. The CTS database has potential to expand to identify rare serovars. With the anticipated shift to molecular methods for identification, CTS provides an easy transition and demonstrates ease-of-use and reduces the turn-around-time of a reported result significantly compared to classical serotyping.
Alberta Provincial Laboratory for Public Health, Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Christina
C
Ferrato
Alberta Provincial Laboratory for Public Health, Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. Electronic address: Linda.Chui@albertahealthservices.ca.
Linda
L
Chui
Alberta Agriculture and Forestry, Government of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
Robin
R
King
Alberta Provincial Laboratory for Public Health, Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; Department of Microbiology Immunology and Infectious Diseases, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada.
Marie
M
Louie
D000416:Alberta; D004196:Disease Outbreaks; D004783:Environmental Microbiology; D005517:Foodborne Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis; D006801:Humans; D007753:Laboratories; D058889:Molecular Typing / Q000191:economics / Q000379:methods; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis / Q000379:methods; D011634:Public Health; D012475:Salmonella / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification; D012480:Salmonella Infections / Q000175:diagnosis; D019779:Salmonella enterica / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D065288:Serogroup; D012703:Serotyping / Q000191:economics / Q000379:methods*
Infectious disease; Microarray; Molecular typing; Public health; Salmonella surveillance