The aim of this study was to determine the frequency and allele associations of locus of enterocyte effacement encoded esp and tir genes among 181 enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC) strains (90 diarrhoea-associated and 91 controls) isolated from Peruvian children under 18 months of age. We analysed espA, espB, espD and tir alleles by PCR-RFLP. EPEC strains were isolated with higher frequency from healthy controls (91/424, 21.7 %) than from diarrhoeal samples (90/936, 9.6 %) (P,0.001); 28.9% of diarrhoeal and 17.6% of control samples were typical EPEC (tEPEC). The distribution of espA alleles (alpha, beta, beta2 and gamma) and espD alleles (alpha, beta, gamma and a new variant, espD-N1) between tEPEC and atypical EPEC (aEPEC) was significantly different (P,0.05). espD-alpha was more common among acute episodes (P,0.05). espB typing resulted in five alleles (alpha, beta, gamma and tw...

The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence, virulence factors (stx, eae, ehxA and astA) and phylogenetic relationships [PFGE and multilocus sequence typing (MLST)] of Shiga toxinproducing Escherichia coli (STEC) strains isolated from four previous cohort studies in 2212 Peruvian children aged ,36 months. STEC prevalence was 0.4% (14/3219) in diarrhoeal and 0.6% (15/2695) in control samples. None of the infected children developed haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS) or other complications of STEC. stx1 was present in 83% of strains, stx2 in 17 %, eae in 72 %, ehxA in 59% and astA in 14 %. The most common serotype was O26: H11 (14%) and the most common seropathotype was B (45 %). The strains belonged mainly to phylogenetic group B1 (52 %). The distinct combinations of alleles across the seven MLST loci were used to define 13 sequence types among 19 STEC strains. PFGE typing of 20 ...