AI Article Synopsis
- - Antibiotic treatment before hospital transport has lowered the number of patients with invasive meningococcal disease from whom the bacteria Neisseria meningitidis can be isolated.
- - Two types of PCR assays (conventional and real-time) were used to detect DNA related to meningococcal disease, showing high sensitivity (93%) and specificity (98.6%) over a two-year study.
- - The real-time PCR method achieved rapid detection and characterization of N. meningitidis in clinical samples in just one hour, and demonstrated strong agreement with the conventional PCR method.
Article Abstract
Antibiotic treatment prior to transport or admission of patients to hospital has reduced the proportion of patients with invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) from whom Neisseria meningitidis can be isolated by standard microbiological techniques. Assays to detect the crgA gene were used to detect meningococcal DNA by both conventional polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and real-time PCR (RTPCR) in relation to microbiological diagnosis of cases over two years between 2002 and 2003. The sensitivity of both PCR assays for culture-confirmed cases was 93% and the specificity was 98.6%. Agreement between the two PCR assays was 96.2%. The inter- and intra-assay variations and effects of different amounts of DNA on the melting temperatures were examined. The touch-down RTPCR based on SYBR Green I fluorescent dye detected and characterized N. meningitidis in clinical samples within one hour.
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| http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.femsim.2004.10.011 | DOI Listing |
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