Emerging Infectious Diseases (Jan 2002)

Prevalence and Genetic Profiling of Virulence Determinants of Non-O157 Shiga Toxin-Producing Escherichia coli Isolated from Cattle, Beef, and Humans, Calcutta, India

  • Asis Khan,
  • Shinji Yamasaki,
  • Toshio Sato,
  • Thandavarayan Ramamurthy,
  • Amit Pal,
  • Simanti Datta,
  • Nandini Roy Chowdhury,
  • Suresh Chandra Das,
  • Asim Sikdar,
  • Teizo Tsukamoto,
  • Sujit Kumar Bhattacharya,
  • Yoshifumi Takeda,
  • Gopinath Balakrish Nair

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3201/eid0801.010104
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 8, no. 1
pp. 54 – 62

Abstract

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We investigated the prevalence of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) in hospitalized diarrhea patients in Calcutta, India, as well as in healthy domestic cattle and raw beef samples collected from the city's abattoir. Multiplex polymerase chain reaction using primers specific for stx1 and stx2 detected STEC in 18% of cow stool samples, 50% of raw beef samples, and 1.4% and 0.6% of bloody and watery stool samples, respectively, from hospitalized diarrhea patients. Various virulence genes in the STEC isolates indicated that stx1 allele predominated. Plasmid-borne markers, namely, hlyA, katP, espP, and etpD, were also identified. Bead enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and Vero cell assay were performed to detect and evaluate the cytotoxic effect of the Shiga toxins produced by the strains. STEC is not an important cause of diarrhea in India; however, its presence in domestic cattle and beef samples suggests that this enteropathogen may become a major public health problem in the future.

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