In April 2019, Finland reported false-negative or equivocal results in patients tested for Chlamydia trachomatis (CT) using Aptima Combo 2 Assay (Hologic) (AC2).
This gap analysis demonstrated that there are significant gaps in diphtheria diagnostic capacity within the EU/EEA, with only six Member States fulfilling the minimum criteria in terms of surveillance, specialised laboratory diagnostics and expertise.
ECDC promotes the performance of external quality assessment (EQA) schemes, in which laboratories are sent simulated clinical specimens or bacterial isolates for testing by routine or reference laboratory methods. EQA schemes, or laboratory proficiency testing, provide information about the accuracy of different characterisation and typing methods as well as antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) and the sensitivity of the methods in place to detect a certain pathogen or novel resistance patterns.
ECDC encourages adoption of EU and ISO quality standards for diagnostic and reference laboratory services by its partners in EU laboratory networks and in line with national arrangements and regulations.
In July 2014, a panel of two viable isolates of N. meningitidis of the major disease-causing serogroups with three simulated cerebrospinal fluid (non-culture) samples for molecular studies, was sent by UK NEQAS to 30 reference laboratories in the IBD-labnet surveillance network for quality assessment testing. This report summarises the diagnostic results submitted by the participating laboratories.
This report comprises the findings of an external quality assessment for the laboratory diagnosis of diphtheria serology under the European Diphtheria Surveillance Network.
This report describes an external quality assessment in 2013 for the laboratory diagnosis of diphtheria under the European Diphtheria Surveillance Network.