Community outbreaks of group A Streptococcus revealed by genome sequencing.

ABSTRACT: The frequent occurrence of disease outbreaks in humans caused by group A Streptococcus (GAS) is an on-going public health threat. Conventional bacterial typing methods lack the discriminatory power to confidently confirm or refute outbreaks in hospital and community settings. Microbial whole genome sequencing (WGS) provides a potential solution to this, but, there has been limited population-based surveillance with accompanying sequence data. We performed retrospective genomic surveillance of 93 clinical GAS isolates from individuals in a defined geographic region. Detailed clinical information was obtained for closely related clusters of isolates. Genomic sequence data was contextualised through comparison with international data. We identified 18 different emm genotypes within our bacter

SUBMITTER: Turner CE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5561225 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature