Osong Public Health Res Perspect.  2011 Jun;2(1):8-14. 10.1016/j.phrp.2011.04.008.

Genotypic Characterization of Vibrio vulnificus Clinical Isolates in Korea

• Jeong HS
• Kim JY
• Jeon SM
• Park MS
• Kim SH

• KMID: 2517958
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.phrp.2011.04.008

Abstract

Objectives
Vibrio vunificus is known to cause septicemia and severe wound infections in patients with chronic liver diseases or an immuno-compromised condition. We carried out the molecular characterization of V. vulnificus isolates from human Vibrio septicemia cases based on pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) using NotI and SfiI.
Methods and Results
PFGE was used to characterize a total of 78 strains from clinical cases after NotI or SfiI digestion. The geographical distribution of PFGE patterns for the strains from the southern part of Korea, a high-risk region for Vibrio septicemia, indicated that the isolates from southeastern Korea showed a comparatively higher degree of homology than those from southwestern Korea.
Conclusions
We report the genetic distribution of V. vulnficus isolated from Vibrio septicemia cases during 2000–2004 in Korea. This method has potential use as a subspecies-typing tool for V. vulnificus strains isolated from distant geographic regions.

Keyword

molecular typing; PFGE