Escherichia coli and Community-acquired Gastroenteritis, Melbourne, Australia

摘要

As part of a study to determine the effects of water fil-tration on the incidence of community-acquired gastroen-teritis in Melbourne, Australia, we examined fecal samplesfrom patients with gastroenteritis and asymptomatic per-sons for diarrheagenic strains of Escherichia coli. Atypicalstrains of enteropathogenic E. coli (EPEC) were the mostfrequently identified pathogens of all bacterial, viral, andparasitic agents in patients with gastroenteritis. Moreover,atypical EPEC were more common in patients with gas-troenteritis (89 12.8 of 696) than in asymptomatic per-sons (11 2.3 of 489, p < 0.0001). Twenty-two randomisolates of atypical EPEC that were characterized furthershowed marked heterogeneity in terms of serotype, genet-ic subtype, and carriage of virulence-associated determi-nants. Apart from the surface protein, intimin, no virulencedeterminant or phenotype was uniformly present in atypicalEPEC strains. This study shows that atypical EPEC are animportant cause of gastroenteritis in Melbourne