Abstract
Cyclosporiasis is an infection caused by Cyclospora cayetanensis, which is acquired by consumption of contaminated fresh food or water. In the United States, cases of cyclosporiasis are often associated with foodborne outbreaks linked to imported fresh produce or travel to disease-endemic countries. Epidemiologic investigation has been the primary method for linking outbreak cases. A molecular typing marker that can identify genetically related samples would be helpful in tracking outbreaks. We evaluated the mitochondrial junction region as a potential genotyping marker. We tested stool samples from 134 laboratory-confirmed cases in the United States by using PCR and Sanger sequencing. All but 2 samples were successfully typed and divided into 14 sequence types. Typing results were identical among samples within each epidemiologically defined case cluster for 7 of 10 clusters. These findings suggest that this marker can distinguish between distinct case clusters and might be helpful during cyclosporiasis outbreak investigations.
Highlights
Cyclosporiasis is an infection caused by Cyclospora cayetanensis, which is acquired by consumption of contaminated fresh food or water
The mitochondrial junction region of C. cayetanensis exhibited a high degree of variability between samples because of 3 variations of a 15-nt motif referred to as type I, TAGTATTATTTATAA; type II, TAGTATTATTTTTAA; and type III, TAGTATTATTTTAAA (Appendix Figure, https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/ EID/article/25/7/18-1447-App1.pdf)
Each main group could be further divided into 2–5 sequence types on the basis of the repeat motifs and 3 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) present downstream of the repeat region
Summary
Cyclosporiasis is an infection caused by Cyclospora cayetanensis, which is acquired by consumption of contaminated fresh food or water. In the United States, cases of cyclosporiasis are often associated with foodborne outbreaks linked to imported fresh produce or travel to disease-endemic countries. Recent advances in next-generation sequencing have enabled whole-genome sequencing of the C. cayetanensis parasite [9,10], including its organellar genomes derived from the apicoplast [11,12] and mitochondrion [12,13,14] These advances facilitated development of a multilocus sequence typing (MLST) method based on 5 microsatellites. The purpose of this study was to explore the sequence variation of this junction area of the mitochondrial genome and evaluate it as a potential typing marker for linking cyclosporiasis cases
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
