14 July 2025 [Press release]

Group B Streptococcus (GBS) Awareness Month

July is Group B Streptococcus (GBS) Awareness Month, a time to promote awareness and prevention of this potentially life-threatening infection. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), each year nearly 20 million pregnant women carry GBS. Although harmless for most pregnant individuals, it can be extremely serious when it passes to babies during pregnancy, childbirth or in the first months of life. GBS can cause miscarriage, still or premature birth, sickness, lifelong handicaps, or even death. 

Universal GBS screening is now the standard of care in many countries. Accurate testing between 36 and 37 weeks of each pregnancy allows timely administration of intrapartum antibiotic prophylaxis (IAP) to identified carriers during labor. 

The GenoQuest GBS qPCR Assay can be completed in less than 2 hours and provides a highly sensitive method to detect as low as 30 copies of GBS DNA, and has been optimised for a fully automated workflow on the geneLEAD VIII system. If you would like to learn more about this platform, please contact our sales team at [email protected].