Escherichia coli O157:H7 is a food-borne pathogen that can cause hemorrhagic colitis and, occasionally, hemolytic uremic syndrome, a sequela of infection that can result in renal failure and death. Here we sought to model the pathogenesis of orally-administered E. coli O157:H7 in BALB/c mice with an intact intestinal flora. First, we defined the optimal dose that permitted sustained fecal shedd...

Polymorphic Amplified Typing Sequences (PATS) is a PCR-based Escherichia coli O157 (O157) strain typing system. Here, we show that PATS compares excellently with Pulsed-Field Gel Electrophoresis (PFGE) in that both methods cluster geographically diverse O157 isolates similarly. Comparative analysis of the results obtained in this simulated "blind" study attests to the discriminating power and a...

Escherichia coli O157:H7 is a major food safety concern for the beef industry. Several studies have provided evidence that cattle hides are the main source of beef carcass contamination during processing and that reductions in the E. coli O157:H7 load on the hides of cattle entering processing facilities will lead to reductions in carcass contamination. Bacteriophages have been proposed as a no...

Escherichia coli O157 is an uncommon but serious cause of gastroenteritis. This bacterium is noteworthy because a few, but significant, number of infected people develop the haemolytic uraemic syndrome, which is the most frequent cause of acute renal failure in children in the Americas and Europe. Many infections of E coli O157 could be prevented by the more effective application of evidence-ba...

Primers were designed to amplify sequences of verocytotoxin genes and eaeA genes of Escherichia coli O26:H11, O111:H8, and O157:H7 in a multiplex PCR assay. This assay successfully detected E. coli O26:H11 in bloody stool specimens in which other enteric pathogens were not detected by culture-based methods. Rapid assays to detect non-O157:H7 verocytotoxin-producing E. coli is important to impro...

Escherichia coli O157:H7 has been implicated in diarrhoea, dysentery, haemorrhagic colitis and uraemic haemolytic syndrome but is not routinely cultured in laboratories. We tested 322 samples from children referred with diarrhoea to a clinic in Zahedan, Islamic Republic of Iran. There were 21 sorbitol-negative E. coli isolated; serotyping revealed 4 strains positive for O157, out of which only ...

Escherichia coli O157:H7, predominantly originated from beef, is a significant pathogen to the public health and thus, needs to be vigorously surveyed in meat samples. Three (6%) of 50 ground beef samples were found to be contaminated with E. coli O157:H7, but it was not detected any of 50 chicken drumsticks. This contamination rate of ground beef samples indicated that unhygienic practices pre...

A novel sequence of 2.9 kb in the intergenic region between the mutS and rpoS genes of Escherichia coli O157:H7 and closely related strains replaces a sequence of 6.1 kb in E. coli K-12 strains. At the same locus in Shigella dysenteriae type 1, a sequence identical to that in O157:H7 is bounded by the IS1 insertion sequence element. Extensive polymorphism in the mutS-rpoS chromosomal region is ...

Shiga-toxigenic Escherichia coli (STEC) O157 occurrence was determined along the entire gastrointestinal tract (GIT) of each of four naturally shedding cattle and at three sites in 61 slaughter cattle. STEC O157 was distributed along the entire GIT, though interanimal distribution was variable. Neither feces nor rectoanal-junction samples accurately predicted the STEC O157-negative status of an...

Twenty four sera from patients with haemolytic uraemic syndrome or haemorrhagic colitis and healthy controls were examined for antibodies to the lipopolysaccharide (LPS) of Escherichia coli O157. Faecal specimens from these patients were also examined for Vero cytotoxin producing E coli (VTEC) by DNA probes, and for faecal Vero cytotoxin. Eight patients with faecal E coli O157:H7 gave a strong ...