Characterization of native Escherichia coli populations from bovine vagina of healthy heifers and cows with postpartum uterine disease

GONZALEZ MORENO, CANDELARIA; TORRES LUQUE, ANDREA; OLISZEWSKI, RUBÉN; ROSA, RAMIRO J.; OTERO, MARÍA C.

PLOS ONE

PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE

Año: 2020

1932-6203

Even though Escherichia coli are common bacteria of the bovine vaginal microbiota, theyrepresent an important pathogen that causes diseases in the reproductive tract and subfertility.However, the actual endometrial virulence profile of E. coli is poorly understood. Thepresent study aims to characterize the phylogenetic structure and virulence potential ofnative vaginal populations of E. coli from healthy heifers (H), and cows with postpartum uterinediseases (PUD), such as metritis/endometritis (MT) or repeat breeder cows (RB). Tothis end, the virulence repertoire of 97 E. coli isolates was genotypically and phenotypicallyassessed. Most of them were assigned to phylogenetic group A (74%), followed by B1(17%) and D (9%); RB strains were significantly (p < 0.05) more represented by B1. Sevenof the 15 evaluated virulence genes (VFG) were detected and the most prevalent were fimH(87%), agn43 (41%) and csgA (35%); while traT (27%), fyuA (11%), hlyA (5%) and kpsMT II(5%) were observed in a lower proportion. Particularly, fyuA was significantly higher (p