Aeromonas hydrophila typing scheme based on patterns of agglutination with erythrocytes and yeast cells

An agglutination typing scheme has been developed for strains of Aeromonas hydrophila. Primary agglutination typing is based on testing agar-grown A. hydrophila cells with human, horse, rat, and guinea pig erythrocytes and Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells. Further subdivision of primary groups is based firstly on whether yeast cell agglutination is inhibited by a D-mannose polymer, yeast mannan, and secondly on patterns of inhibition of hemagglutination by yeast mannan and the monomeric sugars L-fucose, D-galactose, and D-mannose. A total of 320 isolates were tested, and these were divisible into 39 distinct types on the basis of this scheme. Application of this typing scheme in the future to isolates of A. hydrophila known to be associated with human infection may enable correlations to be made between particular agglutination types and human pathogenicity.