Characterization of cytotoxic, hemolytic Aeromonas caviae clinical isolates and their identification by determining presence of a unique hemolysin gene

Abstract

Aeromonas caviae has recently been recognized as an important enteropathogen, and its hemolysin is purported to be one of the virulence factors. In this study, a total of 80 clinical isolates of Aeromonas spp. were investigated by PCR with synthetic oligonucleotides targeting a cloned hemolysin-encoding sequence from an A. caviae isolate of clinical origin. Of the 35 clinical A. caviae isolates tested, only 6 contained the target sequence.