Virulence Profiles of Diarrheagenic <i>Escherichia coli</i> Isolated from the Western Region of Ghana

Diarrheagenic Escherichia coli (DEC), an important agent of infectious diarrhea, is constantly evolving, making its periodic monitoring necessary. However, the DEC genotypes in Ghana remain uncharacterized. We focused on characterizing molecular serotypes, virulence factors, multilocus sequence types, and phylogenetic relatedness among different pathotypes recovered from stool samples pediatric patients with symptoms diarrhea Western region Ghana. detected all five common pathotypes, majority isolates being enterotoxigenic E. (ETEC) harboring heat-labile enterotoxin gene. The strains exhibited diverse serotypic identity novel previously reported outbreak strains. Sequence types (ST) ST38, ST316, ST1722 were most prevalent, clonal complex 10 (CC10) was CC. A close evolutionary distance observed isolates. Coli surface antigen 6 prevalent (44%, n = 11) ETEC-specific colonization factor. Nearly harbored lpfA, frequencies other genes such as pap cnf1 7.9% 18.4%, respectively. This study provides insights into circulating that should be monitored for public health.