Abstract
Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are one of the most common types of bacterial infection in humans in various parts of the world and are caused mainly by uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC). A total of 58 UPEC isolates from urine were characterized by serotyping and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). The majority of the UPEC strains belonged to serogroups O2 and O6. The UPEC strains were grouped under different pulsotypes and majority of them belonged to serogroups O2 and O6. Among the 14 virulence factors considered, 13 were present in various serogroups. The virulence genes fimH and sfa were present in all the isolates while none of the isolates carried lt-1. The strains exhibited 36 different virulence patterns, of which 11, referred to as UP (UPEC pattern) 1 to UP 11 were most common. Antibiotic resistance profiling of the UPEC isolates revealed that the serogroups O2 and O6 contain the highest number of resistant strains. The data from the current study depicting the distribution of UPEC strains among various serogroups and pulsotypes, and the occurrence of virulence genes and antibiotics resistance offer useful information on the epidemiological features of UPEC in Korea for the enhanced surveillance of potential emergence of UPEC.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by research fund of Chungnam National University (2015). Also, this research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (NRF-2014R1A6A1029617).
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Dong Ho Kim, Bindu Subhadra, Hee Young Kang, Kyungho Woo, Jaeseok Kim, Yeo-Jin Son, Kyung Mok Sohn, Hwa-Jung Kim, Kyudong Han, Man Hwan Oh and Chul Hee Choi declare that they have no conflict of interest.
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Kim, D.H., Subhadra, B., Kang, H.Y. et al. Virulence properties of uropathogenic Escherichia coli isolated from children with urinary tract infection in Korea. Genes Genom 40, 625–634 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13258-018-0664-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13258-018-0664-6