Patient characteristics.

<p>F: female, M: male, n: number, y: years-old.</p><p>* One sample was negative for all tested targets whereas volume of remaining material for two other samples was not sufficient to perform the assays.</p

Sequence and characteristics of oligonucleotides used in the qPCR assay.

<p>qPCR: quantitative polymerase chain reaction.</p

Insertion sequence (IS)-content used in the species-specific qPCR assay.

<p>qPCR: quantitative polymerase chain reaction; B: <i>Bordetella</i>; C_t: cycle threshold; IS: insertion sequence.</p>a<p>An amount of 1 ng of DNA purified from stored samples was subjected to qPCR.</p><p>Serial dilutions of purified DNA from control isolates were used to evaluate the sensitivity of the different PCR reactions, which were approximately 7–8 bacteria/reaction.</p>b<p>Kindly provided by Pr. N. Guiso.</p>c<p>Human and animal isolates of <i>B. bronchiseptica</i> can sometimes contain few copies of IS<i>481</i> and/or IS<i>1001</i><a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0088936#pone.0088936-Tatti1" target="_blank">[22]</a>, <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0088936#pone.0088936-Tizolova1" target="_blank">[29]</a>.</p