A molecular epidemiological investigation of multistate outbreaks of Salmonella Enteritidis from clinical and environmental samples in Turkey, 2000–2010

To analyze interrelated Salmonella Enteritidis strains isolated in Turkey. Fifty-five S. Enteritidis surveillance strains were isolated from human feces and environmental samples from different regions in Turkey between 2000 and 2010. Materials and methods: Clinical isolates were selected from different outbreaks in the Turkish National Reference Laboratory. All isolates were submitted to antimicrobial susceptibility test, plasmid profile analysis, and XbaI-digested pulsed-field gel electrophoresis. Results: The strains were scanned against 20 antibiotics and for 3 of them (amikacin, ciprofloxacin, gentamicin), all strains were found to be sensitive. Five isolates had no plasmid. Most of test strains carried the 57-kb plasmid in common and 15 genotypes were identified among the 55 isolates. Six genotypes were related closely, 3 genotypes were undistinguished, and 6 genotypes were unrelated. Conclusion: To our knowledge, this is the first report on the phenotypic and molecular characterization of S. Enteritidis isolates from both environmental samples and clinical isolates in Turkey.