Virulence and antimicrobial resistance characteristics of Vibrio parahaemolyticus isolated from environment, food and clinical samples in the south of Vietnam, 2010

Background Vibrio parahaemolyticus is a major cause of food poisoning in many countries. The rapid cases of this agent in recent years made it become an important etiology. However, the relationship between strains isolated from environment, food and clinical samples is still unclear. The presence of antimicrobial resistance and virulence factors such as tdh (thermostable direct hemolysin), trh (the TDH – related hemolysin) are proven to be candidate markers for studying on Vibrio parahaemolyticus. In Vietnam, the existence of Vibrio parahaemolyticus is poorly understood. Our objective was to analyse the presence of Vibrio parahaemolyticus from different sources of samples as well as its virulent factors (tdh and trh genes) and antibiotic resistance characteristics.