Prevalence, antibiotic resistance, virulence and plasmid profiles of Vibrio parahaemolyticus from a tropical estuary and adjoining traditional prawn farm along the southwest coast of India

Abstract

Vibrio parahaemolyticus, autochthonous to estuarine, marine, and coastal environments throughout the world, is a leading cause of foodborne gastroenteritis in Asia as well as in other countries. Considering their role in disease outbreaks, water and sediment samples from two different environments along the southwest coast of India, such as the Cochin estuary, which is a tourist hot spot and a traditional prawn farm, were examined for the detection of V. parahaemolyticus. A total of 120 presumptive vibrios were further screened using a chromogenic medium. The isolates producing the specific colour for V. parahaemolyticus on the chromogenic medium were confirmed by molecular methods. Using a PCR assay targeting the species-specific tlh gene, 75 isolates were confirmed as V. parahaemolyticus. The incidence of V. parahaemolyticus was found to be 71.6 % in the Cochin estuary and 53.3 % in the shrimp farm. The virulence genes tdh and trh were detected in two isolates from the Cochin estuary by multiplex PCR. Using 16S rRNA sequence analysis, our isolate exhibited 100 % similarity to the V. parahaemolyticus O3:K6 pandemic clone. The isolates were evaluated for their susceptibility towards 16 different antibiotics. All the isolates exhibited multiple antibiotic resistance (MAR). The MAR index of the isolates from the Cochin estuary ranged from 0.312 to 0.75 and that from the shrimp farm ranged from 0.1875 to 0.5. The plasmid profiles of the isolates were also checked. About 50.6 % of the isolates harboured plasmids and ten different profiles were observed. No correlation was observed between the antibiotic resistance patterns and plasmid profiles.

Characterization of Vibrio parahaemolyticus isolated from coastal water in Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia

“…Most strains of V. parahaemolyticus isolated from the environment or seafood, in contrast to clinical strains, do not produce tdh and trh (Alam et al, 2002;Ceccarelli et al, 2013;Shaw et al, 2014). In this study, the plasmid profiles did not correlate with antibiotic resistance patterns and our observation in agreement with similar findings reported by Silvester et al (2015).…”

Prevalence, Virulence Characterization, AMR Pattern and Genetic Relatedness of Vibrio parahaemolyticus Isolates From Retail Seafood of Kerala, India

“…The prevalence of tdh + or trh + strains in seafood and environment is reported to be less and constitutes 1-10% of the isolates, whereas most of the clinical V. parahaemolyticus isolates carry tdh and/or trh genes (Cook et al, 2002;Deepanjali et al, 2005;Fuenzalida et al, 2006;Letchumanan et al, 2015Letchumanan et al, , 2014. Although there have been reports on the detection of tdh and trh gene from Cochin estuary and tiger shrimp culture environment in Cochin along the south-west coast, there are no major reports of detection of pathogenic V. parahaemolyticus carrying tdh and trh virulence genes from seafood (Chakraborty and Surendran, 2009;Silvester et al, 2015). In India, isolation of pathogenic isolates of V. parahaemolyticus possessing tdh gene from retail seafood is rarely reported (Dileep et al, 2003;Pal and Das, 2010;Parthasarathy et al, 2016).…”

Prevalence of vibrios with special reference to Vibrio parahaemolyticus in farmed penaeid shrimp, Penaeus vannamei (Boone, 1931) from selected districts of Tamil Nadu, India

“…1, 2) as observed in morphological, physiological and biochemical characterisation (Ananda Raja et al, 2017b). Similarly, Silvester et al (2015) confirmed 75 isolates as V P using a PCR assay targeting the species-specific tlh gene and found that the prevalence of V P was 71.6% in the Cochin Estuary and 53.3% in the shrimp farms. Letchumanan et al (2015a, b) indicated that a total of 57.8 and 44.4% isolates were positive for V P with toxR-based PCR assay.…”