Virulence Characteristics and Antibiotic Resistance Profiles of Shiga Toxin-Producing Escherichia coli Isolates from Diverse Sources
Department of Food Science and Biotechnology, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Kangwon National University, Chuncheon 200-701, Korea
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Antibiotics 2020, 9(9), 587; https://doi.org/10.3390/antibiotics9090587
Received: 17 July 2020 / Revised: 2 September 2020 / Accepted: 7 September 2020 / Published: 8 September 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Discovery and Functional Evaluation of Antimicrobials)
Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) is an enteric pathogen that causes several gastrointestinal ailments in humans across the world. STEC’s ability to cause ailment is attributed to the presence of a broad range of known and putative virulence factors (VFs) including those that encode Shiga toxins. A total of 51 E. coli strains belonging to serogroups O26, O45, O103, O104, O113, O121, O145, and O157 were tested for the presence of nine VFs via PCR and for their susceptibility to 17 frequently used antibiotics using the disc diffusion method. The isolates belonged to eight different serotypes, including eight O serogroups and 12 H types. The frequency of the presence of key VFs were stx1 (76.47%), stx2 (86.27%), eae (100%), ehxA (98.03%), nleA (100%), ureC (94.11%), iha (96.07%), subA (9.80%), and saa (94.11%) in the E. coli strains. All E. coli strains carried seven or more distinct VFs and, among these, four isolates harbored all tested VFs. In addition, all E. coli strains had a high degree of antibiotic resistance and were multidrug resistant (MDR). These results show a high incidence frequency of VFs and heterogeneity of VFs and MDR profiles of E. coli strains. Moreover, half of the E. coli isolates (74.5%) were resistant to > 9 classes of antibiotics (more than 50% of the tested antibiotics). Thus, our findings highlight the importance of appropriate epidemiological and microbiological surveillance and control measures to prevent STEC disease in humans worldwide.
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MDPI and ACS Style
Rubab, M.; Oh, D.-H. Virulence Characteristics and Antibiotic Resistance Profiles of Shiga Toxin-Producing Escherichia coli Isolates from Diverse Sources. Antibiotics 2020, 9, 587. https://doi.org/10.3390/antibiotics9090587
AMA Style
Rubab M, Oh D-H. Virulence Characteristics and Antibiotic Resistance Profiles of Shiga Toxin-Producing Escherichia coli Isolates from Diverse Sources. Antibiotics. 2020; 9(9):587. https://doi.org/10.3390/antibiotics9090587
Chicago/Turabian StyleRubab, Momna; Oh, Deog-Hwan. 2020. "Virulence Characteristics and Antibiotic Resistance Profiles of Shiga Toxin-Producing Escherichia coli Isolates from Diverse Sources" Antibiotics 9, no. 9: 587. https://doi.org/10.3390/antibiotics9090587
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