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. 2020 Jan 27;2(3):acmi000093.
doi: 10.1099/acmi.0.000093. eCollection 2020.

Laboratory methods supporting measles surveillance in Queensland, Australia, 2010-2017

Jamie L McMahon  1   2 , Judith A Northill  2 , Mitchell Finger  2 , Michael Lyon  2 , Stephen B Lambert  1 , Ian M Mackay  1   2
Affiliations

Laboratory methods supporting measles surveillance in Queensland, Australia, 2010-2017

Jamie L McMahon et al. Access Microbiol. .

Abstract

Purpose: Australia was officially recognised as having eliminated endemic measles transmission in 2014. Maintaining laboratory support for surveillance of vaccine-preventable diseases, such as measles, is an essential component of reaching and maintaining transmission-free status.

Methodology: Real-time and conventional PCR-based tools were used to detect, differentiate from measles vaccine virus (MeVV), and sequence fragments of measles viruses (MeV) identified from specimens collected in Queensland. Specimens were mostly from travellers who had visited or returned to Queensland from international or interstate sites or been in contact with a case from either group.

Results: Between 2010 and 2017, 13 678 specimens were tested in our laboratory using real-time RT-PCR (RT-rPCR), identifying 533 positives. Most specimens were swabs (70.98 %) and urines (25.56 %). A MeVV RT-rPCR was used on request and identified 154 instances of MeVV. MeV-positive extracts were genotyped as required. Genotypes identified among sequenced specimens included B3, D4, D8, D9, G3, and H1 as well as members of clade A as expected from the detection of MeV among virus introductions due to global travel and vaccination.

Conclusion: We describe the workflow employed and results from our laboratory between 2010 and 2017 for the sensitive detection of MeV infection, supporting high-quality surveillance to ensure the maintenance of Australia's measles-free status.

Keywords: Measles virus; diagnostics; epidemiology; measles.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Schematic representation of the measles virus (MeV) genome highlighting the genes (open boxes), proteins produced (yellow arrows) and the diagnostic sequencing PCR assay targets (red boxes). The assays indicated are described in Table 1. The genome is drawn to scale and is based on MeV Edmonston strain (GenBank accession: AF266288). This is derived from an earlier version located at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.8248082 [15].
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Phylogenetic analysis of partial nucleoprotein (N)-gene sequences from 122 MeV positive clinical specimens analysed in Queensland between 2010 and 2017. The sequenced region includes the World Health Organization-recommended N450 amplicon encoding the carboxyl-terminal of the N gene. MeV sequences associated with patients are marked with red circles. MeVV sequences described recently [15] are indicated by blue triangles. WHO reference sequences are used to define genotypes (green diamonds) and clades (labelled) [13]. Sequences are labelled using GenBank accession numbers. The phylogenetic analysis used the Neighbour-Joining method in a bootstrap test (500 replicates) in mega7 [22, 25–27]. A higher resolution version is located at 10.6084/m9.figshare.7352489
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