Phylogenetic diversity of Aeromonas from "alheira," a traditional Portuguese meat product.

"Alheira" is a traditional smoked meat sausage produced in the north of Portugal, representing an important economic resource for the region. This meat product has been subjected to research studies with the aim of detecting the presence of common foodborne pathogens, but, to our knowledge, isolation of emerging foodborne Aeromonas from alheira has never been previously described. Present work attempts to evaluate the Aeromonas species diversity of 84 isolates of Aeromonas spp. collected from 32 alheira samples. All presumptive Aeromonas isolates were subjected to genotyping by enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus-polymerase chain reaction analysis. The isolates presenting a different pattern were subjected to gyrB gene sequencing for species classification, and the species A. hydrophila, A. salmonicida, A. caviae, A. media, and A. allosaccharophila were identified. The Aeromonas species diversity found has not been previously described in any other meat product evaluated in previous studies. It is also important to highlight the presence of A. hydrophila and A. caviae because they were previously associated with illness in humans, including gastroenteritis.