Laboratory based identification of pneumococcal infections: Current and future

Laboratory diagnosis of S. pneumoniae is of significance because of growing drug resistance, use of pneumococcal vaccines and etiological diagnosis cannot be made on clinical signs and symptoms. Despite its importance, current culture based diagnostic methods used for decades are less sensitive and fail to provide accurate burden data, effectiveness of control measures such as vaccination. The current reference standards for culture and serotyping are labor intensive, expensive and available only in few laboratories. To understand the etiology of pneumonia, epidemiology of infection and to evaluate vaccine effectiveness simple and efficient novel technologies needs to be the part of diagnostic protocol. This article summarizes newer methods and guidelines used for pneumococcal identification, serotyping and drug resistance testing.