Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis as an epidemiologic tool in the investigation of laboratory acquired Salmonella typhi infection
Koay, A.S.; Jegathesan, M.; Rohani, M.Y.; Cheong, Y.M.
Southeast Asian Journal of Tropical Medicine and Public Health 28(1): 82-84
1997
ISSN/ISBN: 0125-1562 PMID: 9322288 Document Number: 471981
Strains of Salmonella typhi implicated in two separate cases of laboratory acquired infection from patients and the medical laboratory technologists who processed the patients' samples were analysed by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis. Although all four isolates were of bacteriophage type E1, PFGE was able to demonstrate that the strains responsible for the two laboratory acquired cases were not genetically related. The PFGE patterns of the isolates from the MLTs were found to be identical to those of the corresponding patients after digestion with restriction enzyme AvrII. This provided genetic as well as epidemiological evidence for the source of the laboratory acquired infections.