Application of pulsed-field gel electrophoresis to an international outbreak of Salmonella agona.

Between 1 December 1994 and 31 January 1995, Salmonella agona infections increased abruptly in England and Wales; isolates of S. agona from 41 patients with diarrheal illness were referred to the Laboratory of Enteric Pathogens of the Public Health Laboratory Service, compared with nine cases in the previous 12 months. Most isolates were from children under 10 years of age. Many of the cases were in Jewish children in London and several other parts of England; two children required hospital admission.S. agona can be subdivided by phage typing and, by using a method developed in the Laboratory of Enteric Pathogens (L. R. Ward, unpublished manuscript), we found that the isolates belonged to S. agona phage type (PT) 15. The outbreak was traced to a kosher savory snack imported into the United Kingdom from Israel, and all isolates from the contaminated product and from patients who had a history of consuming this product were found to belong to S. agona PT 15 (1). (Full details of this outbreak will be published elsewhere.) After notification of the outbreak in the United Kingdom, health authorities in countries where the contaminated snack had also been distributed were warned of the possibility of an upsurge in S. agona infections; these countries included Israel, the United States, and Canada. Countries in the European Union (EU) were also notified through SALM-NET, the European salmonella surveillance network (2). As a result of such notification, isolates of S. agona subsequently identified as PT 15 were received from patients in Israel, the United States, and France and from food samples in Israel, the United States, and Canada. For outbreak investigations, the policy of the Laboratory of Enteric Pathogens is to use serotyping, phage typing, and antibiogram analysis (Rtyping) for the primary identification and subdivision of isolates, supplemented when appropriate by a range of DNA-based methods, including plasmid analysis, ribotyping, insertion sequence (IS) 200 fingerprinting, and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). The use of these techniques has recently been reviewed (3). Of these methods, PFGE has been used for the molecular fingerprinting of S. typhi (4, 5) and for subdivision within epidemic phage types of S. enteritidis (6, 7). Because a small number of patients in England and Wales had been infected with S. agona PT 15 in the 11 months before the kosher snack outbreak, we decided to characterize the outbreak isolates by genotypic methods and, if possible, to use such methods for subdivision within the phage type. For S. agona, strains of this serotype do not possess IS200 elements (8), and studies by the Laboratory of Enteric Pathogens have demonstrated that the serotype is unlikely to be subdivided by ribotyping (M.D. Hampton, E.J. Threlfall, unpublished observations). PFGE was, therefore, considered the method most likely to provide a genotypic fingerprint suitable for epidemiologic investigations. Isolates from the food product and from all patients infected both during the outbreak and in the preceding 11 months were, therefore, examined by PFGE. Similarly, because of the international distribution of the contaminated food product, S. agona PT 15 organisms isolated in Israel and Canada from the food product and also from specimens from patients in Israel, the United States, and France were examined by PFGE. Analysis by PFGE of the fragments resulting from Xba I digestion of genomic DNA from 78 isolates of S. agona PT 15 made in the United Kingdom, Israel, the United States, Canada, and France between December 1993 and April 1995 showed 11 distinct pulsed-field profiles (PFP) and one variant profile, with 14 to 17 resolvable chromosomal fragments, ranging from approximately 25 kb to 680 kb (Figure). These profile types have been designated S. agona PFP (XbaI) 1 through to S. agona PFP (XbaI) 9, and S. agona PFPs (XbaI) 11 and 12; the variant type has been designated S. agona PFP (XbaI) 6a. The pattern designated S. agona PFP (XbaI) 10 had been assigned to an isolate of S. agona of an unrelated phage type, which has been used as a control in PFGE analysis of this serotype. The predominant PFGE profile, S. agona PFP (XbaI) 6, gave at least 15 resolvable fragments, ranging from 25 kbp to 485 kbp; this profile type was exhibited by 51 of the 78 isolates examined. The PFP 6 variant, designated PFP 6a and identified in one of the Canadian food isolates, could be differentiated from PFP 6 by the presence of an additional fragment of approximately 395 kbp; in Dispatches