Journal of Community Medicine & Health Education
Open Access

Research Article

Standardization and Enrichment of Culture Medium Improve Detection of Group B Streptococci during Prepartum Screening

¹Department of Clinical Chemistry and Microbiology; Castelli Hospital, Verbania, Italy

²Department of Pediatrics, Castelli Hospital, Verbania, Italy

³Department of Neonatology, University of Turin, Italy

⁴Department of Health, Piedmont Region, Italy

⁵Division of Infectious Diseases, Bolzano Central Hospital, Italy

⁶Department of obstetrics and Gynecology, Castelli Hospital, Verbania, Italy

*Corresponding Author:

Enrico Finale
Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology
“Giuseppe Castelli” Hospital
Via Crocetta 8, 28920, Verbania, Italy
Tel: +39-3930128648
Fax: +39-0323-541348
E-mail: enrico.finale@gmail.com

Received date August 27, 2014; Accepted date December 01, 2014; Published date December 03, 2014

Citation: Lodolo L, Rossi C, Canale C, Barbaglia M, Prandi G, et al. (2014) Standardization and Enrichment of Culture Medium Improve Detection of Group B Streptococci during Prepartum Screening. J Community Med Health Educ 4:319. doi: 10.4172/2161-0711.1000319

Copyright: © 2014 Lodolo L, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

The identification and treatment of infections by the stereptococco group B (GBS), or Streptococcus agalactiae in pregnancy, are meant to prevent potential clinical disorders such as endometritis and neonatal sepsis is early onset (EOD) and late (LOD). The purpose of the study was to analyze the methods of collection and cultivation of GBS in all microbiology laboratories of two Italian regions, Piedmont and Valle d'Aosta, in search of a correlation that could explain the remarkable rate variability of outcomes of the test. The study team analyzed 28491 test from 70 public and private laboratories of microbiology, and crossing data with regional registries of births, there was a positive test by an average of 14.6%, range between 2.4% and 22.6%. Further analysis has revealed that the laboratories used an enrichment broth culture showed a positive test of the 15.49% of the cases (±95% CI: 14.78 to 16.23%; range 10.7 to 22.60%), while the samples analyzed without enrichment broth showed a positivity of 10.53% (±95% CI: 10 to 11.08%; range from 2.40 to 20%) (p<0.0000001). The results show that the breach of the guidelines of microbiology generate a high rate of false negatives and how the enrichment broth can be the gold standard for the culture of GBS during pregnancy.

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