Molecular epidemiological typing of enteropathogenic Escherichia coli strains from Australian patients

Enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC) are an important cause of diarrhoea worldwide, particularly in children. Sixty-one EPEC strains isolated from stool specimens of symptomatic persons from 2008 to 2011 were characterised for the prevalence of diarrhoea-associated putative virulence genes. Phylogenetic typing, serotyping, multilocus variable-number repeat analysis (MLVA), and multilocus sequence typing (MLST) were also performed. The EPEC isolates were highly heterogeneous, representing all 4 phylogenetic groups and comprising 59 MLVA types, 49 MLST types, and 43 serotypes. This diversity is indicative of the complexity of the human enteric EPEC population, which may be either commensal or pathogenic.