Identification

Identification of suspected Shigella spp.

Isolate from urine, stool, blood, environmental, food, other.

Isolate provided on appropriate culture medium with visible growth. Samples can also be submitted under frozen conditions provided they are shipped in appropriate media to survive transport.

Send as growth on appropriate culture medium or in appropriate transport medium. Frozen samples should be shipped on dry ice or other method to ensure they remain frozen.

Shipping of specimens shall be done by a TDG certified individual in accordance with TDG regulations. For additional information regarding classification of specimens for the purposes of shipping, consult either Part 2 Appendix 3 of the TDG Regulations or section 3.6.2 of the IATA Dangerous Goods Regulations as applicable.

Shigellosis.

Completed Enteric Diseases Program requisition form.

N/A

Phenotypic Identification:
Biotyping (biochemical substrate utilization assays)
Serotyping (Serum agglutination assay)*

Molecular Identification:
Whole genome sequencing based methodologies may be applied to aid in species confirmation (Not accredited to ISO/IEC 17025 at this time; ECTyper is not validated to ID Shigella spp. at this time)

*Please contact Enteric Diseases for information on Shigella serotyping interpretation.

For clinical diagnostic or outbreak samples^: 28 calendar days.

For surveillance or research samples^: 3 months

^Please indicate on requisition if identification is for i) clinical diagnostic or outbreak OR ii) surveillance or research application.

Turnaround times for routine isolates may be extended during major foodborne outbreak activities or due to limited availability of resources

Please note that for poor or slower growing organisms reporting of results may be delayed beyond listed turnaround times.

1. Murray, P.R., Baron, E.J., Jorgensen, J.H., Pfaller, M.A., Yolken, R.H., Manual of Clinical Microbiology. 2003. ASM Press. Washington, DC. USA
2. Bessonov K, Laing C, Robertson J, Yong I, Ziebell K, Gannon VPJ, Nichani A, Arya G, Nash JHE, Christianson S. ECTyper: in silico Escherichia coli serotype and species prediction from raw and assembled whole-genome sequence data. Microb Genom. 2021