Isolation and epidemiological characterization of heat-labile enterotoxin-producing Escherichia fergusonii from healthy chickens.

Escherichia fergusonii has been associated with a wide variety of intestinal and extraintestinal infections in both humans and animals. The aim of this study was to demonstrate the presence of heat-labile enterotoxin (LT)-producing E. fergusonii in healthy chickens and its plasmid-mediated LT toxin gene transfer to other Enterobacteriaceae. We tested faecal samples from 184 chicken flocks (consisting of 109 broilers and 75 layers) of 78 commercial chicken farms for the presence of the LT gene using a polymerase chain reaction-based screening and identified samples from 43 flocks (23.4%) as positive for the LT gene. We subsequently isolated and identified E. fergusonii harboring the LT gene from all LT-positive samples and observed 21 various biochemical types. The plasmids encoding LT in 16 (37.2%) of the 43 isolates were conjugally transferred to the recipient strain Escherichia coli J53. Southern hybridization showed that all plasmids from the transconjugants carried the eltAB gene (Ent plasmid) and belonged to the narrow-host-range IncF type. In addition, all the E. fergusonii strains identified were classified into 17 pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) types, and it is likely that there was an association between the PFGE types and geographical location or breed of flocks. In conclusion, this is the first study to demonstrate that LT-producing E. fergusonii strains were present in the faeces of healthy chickens and that plasmid-mediated virulence genes can be transferred to E. coli and may have a great potential to cause human disease.