Extent of circulation of incorrectly labeled adenovirus 50 and 51 prototype preparations.

The last two discovered adenoviral serotypes were adenovirus 50, which belongs to species B1, and adenovirus 51, which belongs to species D (2). As recently described, these two viruses were wrongly labeled vice versa in August 2000 (1). Unfortunately, these wrongly labeled preparations were sent to the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) in Manassas, VA, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atlanta, GA. As already mentioned in the letter of de Jong et al. to the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, CDC discovered the mistake very quickly in September 2000. ATCC was informed immediately by de Jong et al. about the mistake (1). Therefore, the letter by de Jong et al. in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology implies that only adenovirus 50 and 51 samples delivered by ATCC before September 2000 were affected by mislabeling. However, ATCC continued to deliver wrongly labeled adenovirus 50 and 51 samples. On 2 January 2002 we ordered adenovirus type 50 (ATCC VR-1501) and adenovirus type 51 (ATCC VR-1502) and received these on 16 January 2002. These samples were clearly mislabeled which caused considerable confusion in a study on human adenovirus phylogeny (3). We contacted ATCC on the topic of suspected mislabeling and did not receive an answer confirming this suspicion until 24 February 2004. We are afraid that a significant number of research institutions and diagnostic laboratories have received wrongly labeled adenovirus 50 and 51 after September 2000 and are not aware of this mistake. Therefore, any adenovirus 50 or 51 sample delivered by ATCC should be considered wrongly labeled as long as the contrary has not been proven. We suggest that ATCC should actively contact every laboratory that received wrongly labeled samples in order to minimize damage to the scientific community and to the quality of virus diagnostics.