Noroviruses are a common cause of acute gastroenteritis around the world; however, reports of outbreaks caused by GII.17 norovirus are rare. An outbreak caused by GII.17 norovirus in a senior high school in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, China is reported here. An epidemiological investigation, pathogen detection, and case–control study were performed. Epidemiological data combined with the epidemic curve indicated that this outbreak was a point source type initially, followed by secondary transmission. The first case was identified as most likely the source of the outbreak. Risk analysis showed exposure to patients and sharing a communal water cooler to be associated with the spread of infection. Sequence analysis of GII-positive samples confirmed that the norovirus GII.17 variant was the etiological agent of this outbreak.

The objective of this study was to compare the MagNA Pure 96 Pathogen Universal protocol to the MagNA Pure LC DNA Isolation Kit III that is well established in our microbiological laboratory. For this we isolated nucleic acids from ten different sample materials: body fluids (Fluids, urine, sputum), feces, swabs, as well as whole blood, EDTA-, Citrate-Plasma and serum. This spectrum is typical for a microbiology laboratory and includes easy and difficult-to-process samples, as sputum and stool are. Into these sample types we spiked classified pathogen stocks from in-house cultures. Subsequently Real-time PCR analysis of fungal, bacterial and viral targets was done using the LightCycler^® 480 Instrument.The 200 μl protocol performed effi cient and sensitive nucleic acid extraction from up to 96 samples requiring less than 60 minutes runtime. It yielded superior or similar results compared to the respective MagNA Pure LC protocol. Higher input volumes, 500 or 1000 μl, available only for the MagNA Pure 96 System, generally increased sensitivity of detection. Direct use of some routine microbiological samples without dilution by pretreatment reagents, resulted in improved Crossing Point (CP) values. For normal sample types including whole blood this made pretreatment dispensable. A pretreatment step did however improve pathogen detection in the more diffi cult-to-process samples, such as sputum, swabs and stool. Our results demonstrate that both methods allow efficient and convenient isolation of high quality nucleic acid. Compared to the Viral NA Universal protocol, the Pathogen Universal protocol is further optimized for diverse sample materials, including difficult samples and for the detection of various pathogen types. The MagNA Pure 96 Instrument thus enables high throughput sample preparation applications in microbiology laboratories.