Group B
Streptococcus
(GBS) has been increasingly associated with invasive disease in nonpregnant adults. Such infections are responsible for substantial morbidity and mortality, particularly in individuals with underlying chronic conditions.
All supporting data, code and protocols have been provided within the article or through supplementary data files. One supplementary table is available with the online version of this article.
A Shiga toxin 2 producing enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) O121: H19 was isolated from a 2-year-old child who attending a nursery. An EHEC O121 outbreak in two nurseries (A, B), involving a total of 17 infected persons including 12 children, was revealed through contact investigation. The symptoms of all infected persons were almost all mild, and no one developed the hemolytic uremic syndrome. The combination use of desoxycholate-hydrogen sulfide-lactose (DHL) and CHROMagar STEC as selective isolation media was employed for efficient fecal examination. Nursery A and nursery B were combined as one group after the outbreak in nursery A was confirmed. As a result, EHEC O121 infected persons were also detected in children from nursery B. The 17 strains of EHEC O121 obtained from the total population showed almost the same pulsed-gel electrophoresis (PFGE) pattern, suggesting that these strains were very closely related. However, 13 of these 17 strains obtained from nursery A were susceptible to cefotaxime, whereas the remaining 4 strains obtained from nursery B showed cefotaxime resistance. A cefotaxime resistant Escherichia coli (E. coli) O86 strain was isolated in the stool specimen from a child who had been infected with the cefotaxime resistant EHEC O121. Both the cefotaxime resistant EHEC O121 and E. coli O86 had the same drug resistant gene (bla(CTX-M-1) group). The child was the index case of these 4 later cases and had received no antibiotics therapy prior to the laboratory examination. These findings suggested the possibility that an EHEC O121 strain had acquired a drug resistant gene from E. coli O86 in the digestive tract of the child.
SUMMARY:Vibrio parahaemolyticus is an important pathogen that causes gastroenteritis in humans, generally associated with the consumption of contaminated seafood, particularly raw shellfish. There are many serotypes in V. parahaemolyticus resulting from a combination of O and K antigens. Among them, O3:K6 and their variants, which represent the pandemic clone, are the most widespread strains worldwide. In this study, we examined V. parahaemolyticus isolated from a gastroenteritis patient's stool at a hospital in Saitama City, Japan in 2013. Serotyping of the O and K antigens identified the strain as O10:K60. To our knowledge, this is the first reported case of a V. parahaemolyticus strain with this antigen combination in Japan. Subsequently, we used PCR to assay for pathogenicity-associated genes, and found that it was positive for tdh, T3SS1, and T3SS2a genes. Antibiotic susceptibility tests showed that the strain was susceptible to all selected antibiotics except ampicillin. Moreover, we detected specific marker genes for the pandemic clone with two kinds of PCR assay. Our results suggest that the isolate O10:K60 is a newly emerging serotype that belongs to the pandemic clone.
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