Prevalence, Molecular Characterization, and Antibiotic Susceptibility of Vibrio parahaemolyticus from Ready-to-Eat Foods in China

Abstract

Vibrio parahaemolyticus is the leading cause of foodborne outbreaks, particularly outbreaks associated with consumption of fish and shellfish, and represents a major threat to human health worldwide. This bacterium harbors two main virulence factors: the thermostable direct hemolysin (TDH) and TDH-related hemolysin (TRH). Additionally, various serotypes have been identified. The extensive use of antibiotics is a contributing factor to the increasing incidence of antimicrobial-resistant V. parahaemolyticus. In the current study, we aimed to determine the incidence and features of V. parahaemolyticus in ready-to-eat (RTE) foods in China. We found 39 V. parahaemolyticus strains on Chinese RTE foods through investigation of 511 RTE foods samples from 24 cities in China. All isolates were analyzed for the presence of tdh and trh gene by PCR, serotyping was performed using multiplex PCR, antibiotic susceptibility analysis was carried out using the disk diffusion method, and molecular typing was performed using enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus sequence PCR (ERIC-PCR) typing and multilocus sequence typing (MLST). The results showed that none of the isolates were positive for tdh and trh. Most of the isolates (33.3%) were serotype O2. Antimicrobial susceptibility results indicated that most strains were resistant to streptomycin (89.7%), cefazolin (51.3%), and ampicillin (51.3%). The isolates were grouped into five clusters by ERIC-PCR and four clusters by MLST. We updated 10 novel loci and 33 sequence types (STs) in the MLST database. Thus, our findings demonstrated the presence of V. parahaemolyticus in Chinese RTE foods, provided insights into the dissemination of antibiotic-resistant strains, and improved our knowledge of methods of microbiological risk assessment in RTE foods.

Prevalence, Virulence Characterization, AMR Pattern and Genetic Relatedness of Vibrio parahaemolyticus Isolates From Retail Seafood of Kerala, India

“…The antibiotic profiles of the isolates characterized in this study did not coincide with the clustering of ERIC and PFGE. This is consistent with a previous study on antibiotic susceptibility of V. parahaemolyticus from ready-to-eat foods in China (Xie et al, 2016).…”

Isolation and Characterization of the Novel Phages vB_VpS_BA3 and vB_VpS_CA8 for Lysing Vibrio parahaemolyticus

“…Currently, to rapidly and effectively control and terminate the proliferation of pathogenic Vibrio sp., the prophylactic and therapeutic use of antibiotics has been widely employed in hatcheries, the transportation and sales chain; this is despite urgent concerns regarding the development and dispersal of multiple antibiotic-resistance in the pathogen community. Indeed, microbiological risk assessments revealed that both aquatic products and ready-to-eat foods in China can be contaminated by antimicrobial-resistant V. parahaemolyticus, with the highest resistance rates observed against streptomycin (Xie et al, 2015(Xie et al, , 2016(Xie et al, , 2017Xu et al, 2016). Evidently, as antibiotic-resistant strains cause treatment failure, inducing the violent death of these bacteria is a challenge.…”

Genomic and evolutionary features of two AHPND positive Vibrio parahaemolyticus strains isolated from shrimp (Penaeus monodon) of south-west Bangladesh

“…The causative agent of AHPND in shrimp is Vibrio parahaemolyticus; a gram-negative rod shaped bacterium mainly inhabitant in marine and estuarine environment (3). V. parahaemolyticus lives in warm estuarine and marine environments and distributes throughout the world (7). AHPND causing V. parahaemolyticus possesses ~69 kb plasmid encoding toxin genes pirA and pirB (3,8) which are similar to Photorhabdus insect-related (pir) toxin (9) which is one of the major causal factors reported.…”