Hyperimmune horse serum from a single animal (horse 46) immunized with group B (strain B-11) meningococcal vaccine provides a standardized, readily available diagnostic reagent used in primary isolation medium and for serogrouping of meningococci. Identification of the heavy-chain isotypes of specific anticapsular polysaccharide and anti-lipopolysaccharide isolated from horse 46 serum revealed ...

A pair of primers targeting the hlyA gene for Vibrio cholerae which could distinguish the classical from El Tor biotypes was designed and combined with other specific primers for ompW, rfb complex, and virulence genes such as ctxA, toxR, and tcpI in a multiplex PCR (m-PCR) assay. This m-PCR correctly identified 39 V. cholerae from clinical, water and seafood samples. The efficiency of this mult...

Ninety two non-penicillinase producing Neisseria gonorrhoeae (non-PPNG) strains were investigated by the restriction enzyme technique with Hind III enzyme. Serogrouping by coenzyme. A with monoclonal antibodies and testing susceptibility to doxycycline were also performed by an agar dilution method. Fifteen different restriction enzyme patterns were shown, of which three represented 50% (46/92)...

It is technically impractical for many clinical laboratories to use the direct immunofluorescence assay for identifying and serogrouping clinical isolates of Legionella. We compared the results obtained with the direct immunofluorescence assay with the results of a simple and less-demanding slide agglutination test for identifying 15 serogroups representing seven Legionella species. The slide a...

Edema disease is a systemic disease of weaned pigs caused by host-adapted strains of Escherichia coli, most commonly belonging to serogroup O138, O139, or O141. In the late 1990s, E. coli O147 strains containing the virulence genes f18, sta, stb, and stx(2) were recovered from outbreaks of edema disease in the United States. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) was used to determine that the...

New Zealand is experiencing an epidemic of serogroup B meningococcal disease, which has taken the rate of disease from an average of 1.5/100,000 population in the preepidemic years of 1989 and 1990 to 14.0/100,000 in 1996. Sterile-site isolates of Neisseria meningitidis from cases of invasive disease have been phenotypically characterized by serogrouping, serotyping, and serosubtyping, revealin...

Meningococci can cause clusters of disease. Specimens from 1,616 patients in Germany obtained over 42 months were typed by serogrouping and sequence typing of PorA and FetA and yielded a highly diverse dataset (Simpson's index 0.963). A retrospective spatiotemporal scan statistic (SaTScan) was applied in an automated fashion to identify clusters for each finetype defined by serogroup variable r...

Little has been reported on the serological relationship of halophilic bdellovibrios (Bd). Immunodiffusion analysis performed with rabbit or mouse Bd antisera developed against eight halophilic Bd isolates and one terrestrial Bd isolate, when reacted with soluble antigen preparations of 45 isolates of halophilic Bd, allowed separation into seven serogroups, which were distinct from the terrestr...