Molecular characterization of Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli strains isolated from diarrheal patients in Korea during 2003-2011.

ABSTRACT: Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) is one of the major causes of infectious diarrhea in developing countries. In order to characterize the molecular features of human ETEC isolates from Korea, we investigated the profiles of enterotoxin and colonization factor (CF) genes by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and performed multilocus sequence typing (MLST) with a total of 291 ETEC strains. The specimens comprised 258 domestic strains isolated from patients who had diarrhea and were from widely separated geographic regions in Korea and 33 inflow strains isolated from travelers visiting other Asian countries. Heat-stable toxin (STh)-possessing ETEC strains were more frequent than heat-labile toxin (LT)-possessing ETEC strains in the domestic isolates, while the detection rates of both enter

SUBMITTER: Oh KH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4026316 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature