Analysis of clonal relationships among isolates of Shigella sonnei by different molecular typing methods

Shigella sonnei is a major cause of diarrheal disease in developed as well as in developing countries. Epidemiologic studies of this organism have been limited by the lack of a simple and effective method for comparing strains. In this study, we have compared different molecular typing methods, i.e., plasmid profile analysis, restriction endonuclease analysis of plasmids, rRNA gene restriction analysis (ribotyping), pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), and enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus (ERIC) sequence-based PCR (ERIC-PCR) for typing 20 clinical isolates of S. sonnei collected from six incidents of infection. PFGE and ERIC-PCR fingerprintings had the highest discriminatory power for discrimination of epidemiologically related isolates from epidemiologically unrelated strains of S. sonnei, and both gave seven distinct strain types among these isolates and the type strain of the species. Plasmid study and ribotyping produced only six and typing techniques demonstrated two distinct patterns, respectively, among these strains. All of these molecular an identical fingerprint for eight temporally related sporadic isolates. It is possible that these temporally related isolates belonged to a single bacterial clone and circulated obscurely through the community. Our results indicate that the ERIC-PCR technique represents a rapid and simple means for typing S. sonnei with a level of discrimination equivalent to that of PFGE but greater than those of plasmid profile analysis, restriction endonuclease analysis of plasmids, and ribotyping.