In order to evaluate reliability of pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) analysis performed at different prefectural public health institutes (PHIs) for use in the PulseNet Japan surveillance system to detect enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli O157, we compared the results of PFGE-typing of 14 selected strains of O157 performed at 8 selected PHIs to evaluate the reliability of different expe...

Phage typing and DNA macrorestriction fragment analysis by pulsed-field electrophoresis (PFGE) were used for the epidemiological subtyping of a collection of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) O157:H7 strains isolated in Spain between 1980 and 1999. Phage typing distinguished a total of 18 phage types among 171 strains isolated from different sources (67 humans, 82 bovines, 12 ovines...

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has been prevalent in our hospital over the last three years. Differentiation among MRSA strains by DNA typing in addition to antibiotic resistance pattern surveillance is crucial in order to implement infection control measures. The aim of this study was to characterize MRSA isolates from patients admitted to Hospital Universiti Kebangsaan Mal...

AIM To develop a method for conducting pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) on Flavobacterium columnare, to use PFGE to characterize F. columnare channel catfish isolates, and to determine whether variation in pathogenic potential exists in F. columnare isolates from channel catfish. METHODS AND RESULTS On the basis of PFGE-derived profiles, similarity dendrograms constructed for more than...

Shigella sonnei contains numerous IS1 elements. The existence of polymorphisms in the length of the inter-IS1 spacer is a basis for the development of a PCR-based method for the subtyping of S. sonnei strains. The usefulness of inter-IS1 spacer typing (IST) was evaluated and compared with that of pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) by characterization of S. sonnei isolates from epidemiologi...

Shigella sonnei is a significant cause of gastroenteritis in both developing and industrialized countries. Definition of the diversity and antimicrobial susceptibility of S. sonnei isolates may be helpful in the management of individual cases and outbreaks. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) were performed with 67 isolates of S. sonnei predominantly...

PFGE has potential applications in the source tracking of fecal pollution in aquatic environments. We tried to distinguish the genotypes of Enterococcus faecium collected from fecal-contaminated water using PFGE. Well identified 115 strains of E. faecium were classified into 25 PFGE patterns, and characteristics distinctive to each genotype were recognized. Analysis of the characteristics of ge...

Swine Salmonella isolates (n=674) from various locations throughout the United States and Canada were analyzed via pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) with XbaI. PFGE subtypes were analyzed by cluster analysis and compared to conventional serotyping results. The analysis showed a correlation of serotype to PFGE subtype. In addition, conserved fragments were identified within the restriction...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) has been used for characterisation of group B streptococci, non-typeable by serotyping. We wanted to compare PFGE with serotyping in order to see the how well the method discriminates between epidemiological unrelated strains. METHODS A total of 78 epidemiological unrelated invasive GBS strains were examined by PFGE using SmaI di...

To detect Salmonella clusters, public health laboratories perform pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) that provides a PFGE pattern, or DNA fingerprint. If the PFGE patterns of isolates from >2 persons are indistinguishable, the responsible bacteria may be related to a common source (1–3). PulseNet is a network of public health laboratories coordinated by the Centers for Disease Control and ...