Application of three typing schemes (Penner, Lior, Preston) to strains of Campylobacter spp. isolated from three outbreaks.

Campylobacters isolated from human, animal and environmental sources during the investigation of a milk-borne outbreak, an incident involving goats' milk and an outbreak associated with puppies were serotyped using the Penner and Lior schemes and biotyped using the Preston scheme. Application of these three methods to the incident strains demonstrated that heterogenicity amongst similar strains exists. This study has confirmed the need to use at least two typing methods when investigating epidemiologically-related strains and we suggest that a combination of a serotyping scheme and an extended biotyping scheme is the most useful.