Epidemiological characterisation of Neisseria gonorrhoeae isolates from the Far East.

Abstract

SUMMARY One hundred strains of Neisseria gonorrhoeae (including 30 penicillinase producing (PPNG) strains) originating from Korea were characterised by plasmid analysis, auxotyping, and serogrouping. Eighty per cent of the isolates possessed the conjugative 24 5 megadalton (Mdal) plasmid. A novel 7-8 Mdal plasmid was present in four isolates (one PPNG and three non-PPNG strains). Seventy five per cent of all the strains tested were wild type and belonged to serogroup WII, while 20% were proline requiring and belonged to serogroup WlI. Two of the remaining strains were tyrosine auxotrophs, while another strain was arginine requiring; these three strains carried the conjugative plasmid and belonged to serogroup WII.

Plasmid Profiles of Neisseria gonorrhoeae in Peninsular Malaysia

“…Furthermore, a high percentage (75%) of these strains also harbored the large 24.5 Md conjugative plasmid. These findings are in accord with previous findings (1,13,17,22,24) that PPNG strains harboring the Far East type R plasmid also frequently carry the 24.5 Md transfer plasmid. In contrast, most of the PPNG strains harboring the 3.2 Md West Africa type R plasmid do not harbor the conjugative plasmid (16), although in recent years, more and more of these PPNG strains have been shown to carry this large transfer plasmid (1,5,9,23).…”

“…This is similar to the findings of Odugbemi et al (17) who found that the 2.6 Md cryptic plasmid was present in all 100 gonococcal strains from the Republic of Korea.…”

“…Only one of the 160 gonococcal strains examined possessed the newly described 7.8 Md cryptic plasmid, which has been reported in both PPNG and non-PPNG strains (8,17). Here, the 7.8 Md plasmid was present in a non-PPNG isolate.…”

Identification of penicillinase producing Neisseria gonorrhoeae in Chile during clinical and microbiological study of gonococcal susceptibility to antimicrobial agents.

“…The remaining isolates comprised only three auxotypes. The limited number of auxotypes reflects reports from other developing countries in that few auxotypes were present and that proline requiring and wild type auxotypes predominated.23 26 Additional auxotypes in these countries tend to require arginine (ornithine in the present study), proline and arginine, or proline and methionine, as was observed in this study. By contrast, several nations from the northern hemisphere have reported the isolation of up to 20 distinct auxotypes.…”