Comparison of PFGE, ribotyping and phage-typing in the epidemiological analysis of Campylobacter jejuni serotype HS2 infections.

In this study we have evaluated the ability of three typing methods, pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), phage-typing and ribotyping, to discriminate not only between strains of differing serotypes but also between strains within a single serotype, heat stable serotype 2 (HS2). Forty-five isolates derived from cases of campylobacter enteritis occurring in the Cardiff area were examined. These included 18, mostly HS2, strains associated with an outbreak. The typing results for these and a further 39 epidemiologically unrelated strains of serotype HS2 were compared. This is the first report documenting the use of PFGE in an epidemiological investigation of Campylobacter jejuni in the UK. The results presented suggest that this technique is the most discriminatory of the three subtyping methods examined.