ISSN: 0973-7510
E-ISSN: 2581-690X
The aim of this study was to evaluate the presence and frequency of some virulent genes of E. coli O157:H7 in patients with urinary tract infections (UTIs). In this research, the presence of hlyA, eaeA, stx1, and stx2 genes in E. coli O157:H7 isolates was evaluated using a multiplex PCR method. Two hundred and ninety-eight positive bacterial isolates were obtained from suspected UTI samples, with 206 of the isolates (69.1%) belonging to the E. coli category. Of the 206 isolates that were positive for E. coli, 16 of them (7.8%) harbored O157 gene, and 13 of them (6.3%) had both O157 and H7 genes. For this group, multiplex PCR was conducted on stx1, stx2, eae, and hly genes, and the results indicated that the distribution of stx1, stx2, eaeA and hlyA genes among these isolates was as follows: eaeA (15.4%), stx1 and eaeA combined (15.4%), stx2(7.7%), and stx2 and eaeA combined (7.7%). No hlyA genes were identified in the samples.
E. coli O157:H7, hlyA gene, eaeA gene, stx1 gene, stx2 gene, multiplex PCR
© The Author(s) 2014. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which permits unrestricted use, sharing, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.