SEROLOGICAL TYPING OF PSEUDOMONAS-AERUGINOSA - USE OF COMMERCIAL ANTISERA AND LIVE ANTIGENS

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  • 1 January 1977
    • journal article
    • research article
    • Vol. 5  (6) , 640-649
Abstract
A practical slide agglutination test, with commercial antisera (Difco) and live antigens (antigens of live bacteria) taken directly from 24 h antimicrobial susceptibility plates, was established for serotyping P. aeruginosa. Until recently, the lack of both a standard antigenic scheme and a source of commercial antisera made serological typing of this organism impractical. A simplified procedure with 17 unabsorbed antisera and live antigens prepared from materials readily available in most clinical microbiology laboratories makes epidemiological typing of this organism possible in hospital laboratories. The distribution of each serotype examined in this study was determined by using 425 consecutive patient isolates from 6 different hospitals. The distribution of O antigen groups (live antigen) was as follows: O1, 11.5%; O2, 1.6%; O3, 3.8%; O4, 7.8%; O5, 4.2%; O6, 27.1%; O7,8, 5.9%; O9, 6.8%; O10, 2.4%; O11, 8.2%; and O12 through O17, each less than 1%. Of the above, 10.6% agglutinated in 2 antisera, 3.3% agglutinated in more than 2 antisera and 5.2% did not agglutinate in any antisera. A comparison of live and heated antigens shows that 93.2% were typable with the live antigen and 94.5% were typable with the heated antigen. When both antigens were used, 96.3% of 725 isolates were typed. The reproducibility and specificity of the serological procedure were examined. Using the live antigen for routine serological typing in clinical microbiology laboratories for in house epidemiology, reserving the heated antigen for reference and research typing (and for those few cases where results cannot be obtained using the live antigen), is recommended. The application of serotyping in the study of outbreaks of P. aeruginosa is also presented.