Development of an ERIC sequence typing scheme for Laribacter hongkongensis, an emerging pathogen associated with community-acquired gastroenteritis and travellers' diarrhoea

J Med Microbiol. 2013 May;62(Pt 5):701-707. doi: 10.1099/jmm.0.049858-0. Epub 2013 Jan 17.

Abstract

Laribacter hongkongensis is a potential emerging pathogen, associated with community-acquired diarrhoea. For epidemiological purposes, different molecular typing methods, such as pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and multi-locus sequence typing, have been developed for this pathogen. However, these methods require specialized equipment and costly reagents. More importantly, they are labour-intensive and time-consuming, which is not really suitable for foodborne disease outbreak investigations. In this study, we developed a rapid and reliable method using 22-mer primers specific for the enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus sequence (ERIC). PFGE was used for comparison, to evaluate this method. A total of 81 isolates of L. hongkongensis were examined: 79 isolates recovered from food of diverse origins and two strains derived from patients with L. hongkongensis-associated infection. Typing patterns and clustering analysis indicated that the 81 L. hongkongensis isolates were grouped into 21 and 13 genotypes by ERIC-PCR and PFGE, respectively. ERIC-PCR was found as reproducible as PFGE. A high percentage (70.4%) of isolates yielded distinguishable ERIC-PCR patterns, which were concordant with the results from PFGE. These results suggest that ERIC-PCR is valuable for use in the epidemiological investigation of L. hongkongensis.

Publication types

  • Comparative Study
  • Evaluation Study
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Carps / microbiology
  • Communicable Diseases, Emerging
  • Community-Acquired Infections / microbiology
  • DNA, Bacterial / genetics
  • Diarrhea / microbiology*
  • Electrophoresis, Gel, Pulsed-Field
  • Food Microbiology
  • Gastroenteritis / microbiology*
  • Gram-Negative Bacterial Infections / microbiology*
  • Humans
  • Neisseriaceae / classification
  • Neisseriaceae / isolation & purification*
  • Polymerase Chain Reaction / methods*
  • Ranidae / microbiology
  • Travel

Substances

  • DNA, Bacterial