ISSN: 0973-7510

E-ISSN: 2581-690X

S. Mailafia1 and I. Ajogi2
1Veterinary Teaching Hospital, University of Abuja, Nigeria.
2Department of Veterinary Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria.
J Pure Appl Microbiol. 2009;3(1):41-44
© The Author(s). 2009
Received: 11/01/2009 | Accepted: 26/02/2009| Published: 30/04/2009
Abstract

A total of 40 isolates of Aeromonas inclusive 12 from cases of diarrhea and  28  from  water samples comprising 24 A. hydrophila, 10 A. sobria and 6 A. caviae were subjected to  analysis of their biochemical characteristics and  virulence factors. Fermentation of mannitol, lactose and indole was observed in all the 14 species of A. hydrophila recovered from water samples. All the 2 clinical isolates of A. sobria tested fermented mannitol and lactose. Among the virulence factors tested, 57.54% of the environmental isolates produced b-hemolysin, while higher 66.66% of the clinical isolates produced b-hemolysin. There was significant difference between clinical (92.85%) and environmental (66.66%) isolates of Aeromonas with respect to their enterotoxigenicity in suckling mice in-vivo. The result suggests that all the haemolytic environmental isolates could be enteropathogenic.  From this study, we were able to delineate the difference between clinical and environmental isolates of the Nigerian strains of Aeromonas with respect to their biochemical characteristics, virulence factors and enterotoxigenicity.  Further studies involving serogrouping, cytotoxic studies and molecular typing of aeromonads in Nigeria is necessary to reveal other virulent factors involved in diarrhoea.

Keywords

Biochemical characteristics, clinical and environmental Virulence factors

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© The Author(s) 2009. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which permits unrestricted use, sharing, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.