RESEARCH ARTICLE The PneuCarriage Project: A Multi-Centre Comparative Study to Identify the Best Serotyping Methods for Examining Pneumococcal Carriage in Vaccine Evaluation Studies Catherine Satzke1,2*, Eileen M. Dunne1, Barbara D. Porter1, Keith P. Klugman3,E. a11111 Kim Mulholland1,4, PneuCarriage project group¶ 1 Pneumococcal Research Group, Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, Royal Children’s Hospital, Parkville, Victoria, Australia, 2 Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Melbourne, Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, Parkville, Victoria, Australia, 3 Hubert Department of Global Health, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America, 4 Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom OPEN ACCESS ¶ Membership of the PneuCarriage project group is provided in the Acknowledgments. Citation: Satzke C, Dunne EM, Porter BD, Klugman *
[email protected] KP, Mulholland EK, PneuCarriage project group (2015) The PneuCarriage Project: A Multi-Centre Comparative Study to Identify the Best Serotyping Methods for Examining Pneumococcal Carriage in Abstract Vaccine Evaluation Studies. PLoS Med 12(11): e1001903. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001903 Academic Editor: Derek Bell, Imperial College Background London, UNITED KINGDOM The pneumococcus is a diverse pathogen whose primary niche is the nasopharynx. Over Received: February 26, 2015 90 different serotypes exist, and nasopharyngeal carriage of multiple serotypes is common. Accepted: October 9, 2015 Understanding pneumococcal carriage is essential for evaluating the impact of pneumococ- cal vaccines. Traditional serotyping methods are cumbersome and insufficient for detecting Published: November 17, 2015 multiple serotype carriage, and there are few data comparing the new methods that have Copyright: © 2015 Satzke et al.