Prevalence of Escherichia albertii in Raccoons (Procyon lotor), Japan

Abstract

Natural reservoirs of Escherichia albertii remain unclear. In this study, we detected E. albertii by PCR in 248 (57.7%) of 430 raccoons from Osaka, Japan, and isolated 143 E. albertii strains from the 62 PCR-positive samples. These data indicate that raccoons could be a natural reservoir of E. albertii in Japan.

Keywords

• Escherichia albertii
• reservoir
• raccoon
• bacteria
• Japan
• zoonoses