Procedures for Sampling, Handling and Storage of Campylobacter Isolates

Procedures for Sampling, Handling and Storage of Campylobacter Isolates

Date of publication: July 2003

New Zealand authorities responsible for public health and food safety are concerned at the country’s continuing high rates of enteric diseases.

To address this issue, a joint interagency programme Enhanced Co-ordination and Development of Enteric Disease Research in New Zealand is under way.

The programme aims to achieve a significant reduction in the incidence of zoonotic diseases, with campylobacteriosis currently receiving primary attention. Strategic oversight of the programme is undertaken by the Enteric Zoonotic Disease Research in New Zealand Steering Committee. Technical oversight is provided by the Risk Assessment and Methodology Sub-committees that draw members from a range of stakeholder organisations.

As part of the strategy to reduce the incidence of campylobacteriosis, the Steering Committee commissioned and approved publication of methods for sampling, isolation and identification of thermotolerant campylobacters.

An initial report, Isolation of Thermotolerant Campylobacter: Review and Methods for New Zealand Laboratories, was published in May 2003. This second report, Procedures for Sampling, Handling and Storage of Campylobacter Isolates, follows on and provides protocols for standardising sampling and procedures for handling isolates intended for sub-species typing.

Such standardisation is necessary to ensure that all studies and monitoring programmes are equally capable of isolating, identifying and typing Campylobacter of concern to allow characterisation of the disease and its burden, analysis of disease trends, detection of outbreaks and to provide active surveillance of the disease so that appropriate epidemiological inferences can be made. Adoption of robust and standard protocols will ensure that the true pathways of infection can be identified and appropriate risk management strategies implemented.

To ensure that laboratory methods keep up-to-date with international best practice, new tools for statistical evaluation of current and new methods are included. These will be available via a website address allowing interactive use of a "Concordance Calculator" for data on those new and current methods. The Calculator will be reviewed after a period of use to see if any improvements may be necessary.

To compare results obtained by your chosen method to those you have obtained using the Campylobacter Reference method you should use "Lin's concordance correlation statistic". A calculator is available to allow you to do this simply by direct input of your data. Click here to go to the Statistical Calculators on the NIWA web site.

After submission of your data you will receive a report.

The report displays your results graphically—allowing you to identify trends and outliers. It also gives you a coefficient derived from your data and indicates the level of agreement between the two methods. (The site also contains the "kappa calculator". This can be used to assess the degree of agreement between two "presence/absence" variables.)

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