Personal Injury Law

Wide geographical distribution of internationally rare Campylobacter clones within New Zealand

Cambridge University Press has published online in its Cambridge Journals an interesting article titled: "Wide geographical distribution of internationally rate Campylobacter clones within New Zealand."

From the summary:

During the southern hemisphere winter of 2006 New Zealand experienced a significant increase in the number of reported cases of Campylobacter infection. In total, 112 Campylobacter isolates from eight district health boards (DHBs) located across New Zealand were submitted for PFGE, MLST and Penner serotyping analysis.

Distinct clusters of Campylobacter isolates were identified, several of which were composed of isolates from up to five different DHBs located on both the North and South islands of New Zealand. One sequence type, ST-474, was identified in 32 of the 112 isolates and may represent an endemic sequence type present in New Zealand.

The spatial pattern of genotypes, combined with the generalized increase in notifications throughout the country is consistent with a common source epidemic, most likely from a source contaminated with the dominant sequence types ST-474 and ST-190 and may also represent widely distributed stable clones present in New Zealand.

Click on the underlined headline above to go to the complete article.

Full post as published by Campylobacter Blog on July 27, 2008 (boomark / email).