Foodborne diseases: epidemiologicalstudy of prevalent pathogens in the Norwestof Argentina region (NOA)

TORRES LAMBERTI, MF; EVANGELINA BARRIONUEVO MEDINA; ANA BIANCHI; PATRICIA VALDEZ; MARIA DE LAS MERCEDES PESCARETTI; DELGADO, MONICA ALEJANDRA

Buenos Aires

Congreso; Reunión conjunta de Sociedades de Biociencias. LIII Reunión anual de la Sociedad Agentina de Investigación Bioquímica y Biología Molecular (SAIB); 2017

SAIB

Foodborne Diseases (FBD) affect more than 77 million Americanpeople every year, these diseases are caused by food ingestion orwater polluted. The etiological agents could have different originsbut the most important is bacterial. In fact, 95% of the annual deceasesare due to enteropathogens like Salmonella and Shigella. Onthese bases, we decide to perform an epidemiological study of thepathogens responsible for infantile diarrhea, and its prevalence inthe NOA population. For this propose, we isolated and characterizedclinical strains from stool samples collected over 2013-2017 periodin different NOA Header Hospitals. Of 17,100 cases analyzed, weisolated 1774 samples for further study. Unlike other countries, we identified as Shigella (88.75%), and Salmonella in second place. Itis important to note that the highest percentage of isolated Salmonellasp strains was obtained in the Catamarca Hospital, specificallyduring the 2015 year. However, the greatest number of pathogenisolation was carried out in the Tucumán province with a wide differencerange. In concordance with the global tendency, we found thatsome isolated strains presented a multidrug-resistance phenotype.In addition, we observed that these isolates displayed a wide rangeof plasmidic profiles, bacteriocin production and motility behavior.A deep analysis allowed us to generate a clinical isolates collectioncomposed of more than 500 samples. Taken together, all dataanalyzed here suggest that at least in the NOA region, Shigella isthe prevalent pathogen, being Shigella flexneri the most frequentlyisolated, mainly in the 3-5 years population old.