Enterobacterias como agentes etiológicos de la diarrea en la comunidad

Abstract

In order to determine the bacterial agents causing diarrhea in a community, we studied 204 stool samples from children with diarrhea less than ten years old and 48 controls. We also evaluated the utility of the Cary-Blair transport medium and determined the categories of the strains of E. coli isolated using biological and immunological techniques. We found E. coli, enterotoxigenic E.coli heat labile toxin producer (ETEC-LT), Salmonella enteritidis and Shigella sonnei as the principal etiological agents with frequencies of 58.8%, 5.1%, 6.9% and 5.9% respectively. Without the transport medium the sensitivity of the recovery was 37%. The relevance of studies to determine the real frequencies of the categories of E. coli is established.