Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment his Department has made of the relative effectiveness of the enriched culture medium test and the common all-purpose test in diagnosing group B streptococus infection.

A number of published studies indicate selective enrichment broth culture of vagino-rectal swabs is superior to non selective plate culture to improve the recovery of group B streptococcus (GBS) and avoid the overgrowth by vaginal and rectal flora. Public Health England is not aware of any studies that have compared these tests’ ability to predict early onset GBS infection.