Abstract
Vibrio cholerae is a waterborne bacterium and can cause epidemic cholera disease worldwide. Continuous monitoring of V. cholerae contamination in aquatic products is imperative for assuring food safety. In this study, we determined virulence, antimicrobial susceptibility, heavy metal tolerance, and genomic fingerprints of 370 V. cholerae isolates recovered from 12 species of commonly consumed aquatic products collected from July to September of 2018 in Shanghai, China. Among the species, Leiocassis longirostris, Ictalurus punetaus, Ophiocephalus argus Cantor, and Pelteobagrus fulvidraco were for the first time detected for V. cholerae. Toxin genes ctxAB, tcpA, ace, and zot were absent from all the V. cholerae isolates. However, high occurrence of virulence-associated genes was detected, such as hapA (82.7%), hlyA (81.4%), rtxCABD (81.4%, 24.3%, 80.3%, and 80.8%, respectively), and tlh (80.5%). Approximately 62.2% of the 370 V. cholerae isolates exhibited resistance to streptomycin, followed by ampicillin (60.3%), rifampicin (53.8%), trimethoprim (38.4%), and sulfamethoxazole-trimethoprim (37.0%). Moreover, ∼57.6% of the isolates showed multidrug resistant phenotypes with 57 resistance profiles, which was significantly different among the 12 species (multiple antimicrobial resistance index, p < 0.001). Meanwhile, high incidence of tolerance to heavy metals Hg2+ (69.5%), Ni2+ (32.4%), and Cd2+ (30.8%) was observed among the isolates. The enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus-polymerase chain reaction (ERIC-PCR)-based fingerprinting profiles classified the 370 V. cholerae isolates into 239 different ERIC-genotypes, which demonstrated diverse genomic variation among the isolates. Overall, the results in this study meet the increasing need of food safety risk assessment of aquatic products.
Highlights
Vibrio cholerae is a Gram-negative bacterium that is autochthonously inhabited in aquatic environments worldwide
V. cholerae strains were isolated from 92 samples of aquatic products, including 9 species of fish, 1 species of crustacean, and 2 species of shellfish
Most isolates had a similarity coefficient of 50.0–100%, and the Simpson’s diversity index was 0.8150. These results demonstrated high genetic diversity of the 370 V. cholerae isolates recovered from the 12 species of aquatic products
Summary
Vibrio cholerae is a Gram-negative bacterium that is autochthonously inhabited in aquatic environments worldwide. The bacterium can cause cholera, a severe diarrheal disease that is typically transmitted via contaminated water and person-to-person contact.[1,2] It is estimated that V. cholera caused roughly 2.9 million cases of cholera and 95,000 deaths annually worldwide between 2008 and 2012.3 In recent years, cholera remained endemic in developing countries, and the most recent outbreak was reported in Mozambique in March 27, 2019 (World Health Organization, WHO{). Pathogenic V. cholerae (serotype: O1) was found in Rastrineobola argentea in Lake Victoria, Tanzania in 2017.5 continuous monitoring of aquatic products and identification of risk factors of V. cholerae are imperative for assuring food safety.
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