Epidemiologic and Reference Services
Epidemiologic and Reference Services
The Streptococcus Laboratory will try to offer advice concerning laboratory procedures dealing with streptococci (group A, group B, pneumococci) and other catalase negative, gram positive cocci. If you feel that your streptococcal isolates have novel features with potential public health impact, we are glad to discuss ways that we could assist in characterizing these isolates.
Suspected outbreaks should be reported to local or state health departments. Epidemiologic assistance is available from the CDC Respiratory Diseases Branch (404-639-2215, ask for the duty officer)
Unfortunately, we do not have the resources to perform typing or other characterization for all requests sent to CDC's Streptococcal Laboratory. Therefore, we ask requestors to discuss with us, in advance, the reason for the request so that we can best allocate resources to type those isolates that will answer the most pressing public health questions. An outbreak is one example of a situation in which rapid serotyping has immediate value. Additionally, we no longer routinely type S. pneumoniae sent to us that are recovered from patients that have received one of the pneumococcal vaccines. Vaccine failures as well as serotype replacement have been well documented in the literature, and we generate useful population based data through our Active Bacterial Core surveillance.
State public health laboratories interested in developing their own serotyping capacity might consider a PCR-based approach (see http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/biotech/strep/PCR.htm and
3 relevant recent pneumococcal publications http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/biotech/strep/publications.htm).
In summary, we will provide typing or other tests only upon prior communication with a contact in the Streptococcus Laboratory (contact below) indicating the reason for this service.
Requests for reference services should be directed to Bernard Beall (404-639-1237 BBeall@cdc.gov ).
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.