Molecular Evidence for Dissemination of Unique Campylobacter jejuni Clones in Curacao, Netherlands Antilles (original) (raw)

Campylobacter jejuni isolates ( n = 234) associated with gastroenteritis and the Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) in the island of Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles, and collected from March 1999 to March 2000 were investigated by a range of molecular typing techniques. Data obtained by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) analysis, multilocus sequence typing (MLST), automated ribotyping, and sequence analysis of the short variable region of the flagellin gene ( flaA ) were analyzed separately and in combination. Similar groupings were obtained by all methods, with the data obtained by MLST and AFLP analysis exhibiting the highest degree of congruency. MLST identified 29 sequence types, which were assigned to 10 major clonal complexes. PFGE, AFLP analysis, and ribotyping identified 10, 9, and 8 of these clonal groups, respectively; however, these three techniques permitted subdivision of the clonal groups into more different types. Member...