A molecular epidemiological investigation of multistate outbreaks of Salmonella Enteritidis from clinical and environmental samples in Turkey, 2000-2010.

BACKGROUND/AIM To analyze interrelated Salmonella Enteritidis strains isolated in Turkey. Fifty-five S. Enteritidis surveillance strains were isolated from human feces and environmental samples from different regions in Turkey between 2000 and 2010. MATERIALS AND METHODS Clinical isolates were selected from different outbreaks in the Turkish National Reference Laboratory. All isolates were submitted to antimicrobial susceptibility test, plasmid profile analysis, and XbaI-digested pulsed-field gel electrophoresis. RESULTS The strains were scanned against 20 antibiotics and for 3 of them (amikacin, ciprofloxacin, gentamicin), all strains were found to be sensitive. Five isolates had no plasmid. Most of test strains carried the 57-kb plasmid in common and 15 genotypes were identified among the 55 isolates. Six genotypes were related closely, 3 genotypes were undistinguished, and 6 genotypes were unrelated. CONCLUSION To our knowledge, this is the first report on the phenotypic and molecular characterization of S. Enteritidis isolates from both environmental samples and clinical isolates in Turkey.