Molecular Epidemiology of Group A Streptococcus Infections in The Gambia

Molecular epidemiological data on Group A Streptococcus (GAS) infection in Africa is scarce. We characterized the emm-types and emm-clusters of 433 stored clinical GAS isolates from The Gambia collected between 2004 2018. To reduce potential for strain mistyping, we used a newly published primer emm-typing. There was considerable diversity, highlighting need vaccine development offering broad protection.