Abstract
The outer membrane protein (OMP) composition (OMP typing) of 46 fecal Aeromonas strains from hybridization groups (HGs) 1 (A. hydrophila; n = 10), 4 (A. caviae; n = 16), and 8 (A. veronii; n = 20) were examined by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis as a phenotypic typing method. Almost every isolate of HG-1 and HG-8 had a unique OMP profile, in contrast to isolates of HG-4, which were separated into five different OMP types. It was possible to recognize HGs 1, 4, and 8 by OMP profiles. Twenty-three Aeromonas strains from HGs 1 (n = 5), 4 (n = 10), and 8 (n = 8) were tested by whole-cell DNA restriction endonuclease analysis (REA) as a genetic typing method. All strains tested by REA (with SmaI) had different DNA digestion patterns. Although additional DNA-rRNA hybridization analyses with SmaI and 16S and 23S rRNAs from Escherichia coli showed a reduction in the number of restriction bands to 8 to 13 hybridized fragments, the discriminative value was less when compared with that obtained by REA. The individual differences found by REA were used to analyze whether patients remained colonized by the same Aeromonas strain. Of 11 patients with diarrhea, 2 had a different isolate on repeat culture. In addition, one of nine tested fecal samples contained two Aeromonas isolates with different REA patterns. These results indicate that during diarrheal disease the intestinal tract may be colonized simultaneously with different Aeromonas isolates.