Publications by authors named "Steve Connell"
Objectives: WGS and phenotypic methods were used to determine the prevalence of azithromycin resistance in Salmonella enterica isolates from the UK and to identify the underlying mechanisms of resistance.
Methods: WGS by Illumina HiSeq was carried out on 683 Salmonella spp. isolates.
Article Synopsis
- Salmonella enterica strains with the serotype Paratyphi B can lead to a variety of diseases, from mild gastroenteritis to severe systemic infections, yet distinguishing between the strains has proven difficult.
- By utilizing genomic analysis, researchers provide a detailed overview of Paratyphi B, highlighting the limitations of traditional serotyping and microbiological tests in understanding the clinical implications of different strains.
- The findings reveal significant insights into the strain diversity, offering potential new diagnostic tools and raising important questions about the mechanisms behind the more severe invasive disease-associated strains.
In 2012, Sierra Leone experienced its worst cholera outbreak in over 15 years affecting 12 of the country's 13 districts. With limited diagnostic capability, particularly in bacterial culture, the cholera outbreak was initially confirmed by microbiological testing of clinical specimens outside of Sierra Leone. During 2012 - 2013, in direct response to the lack of diagnostic microbiology facilities, and to assist in investigating and monitoring the cholera outbreak, diagnostic and reference services were established in Sierra Leone at the Central Public Health Reference Laboratory focusing specifically on isolating and identifying Vibrio cholerae and other enteric bacterial pathogens.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIdentifying rare Salmonella serotypes by conventional serotyping can be a problem for diagnostic or reference microbiology laboratories. We report two cases of the seldom encountered serovar Salmonella Dubrovnik, which is known as Salmonella subspecies II 41 : z : 1,5, in an elderly man and a young child. Multilocus sequence typing, a technique that is being used more frequently in our laboratory, was used to assist serovar identification as serotyping proved to be inconclusive.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSalmonella enterica subspecies enterica (subspecies I) causes the majority of infections in humans and homeothermic animals. We present a real-time polymerase chain reaction assay targeting the hilA gene that demonstrates 97.9% specificity and 99.
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