CLINICAL MANIFESTATIONS AND MOLECULAR EPIDEMIOLOGY OF 5 CASES OF DIARRHEA IN CHILDREN ASSOCIATED WITH VIBRIO-METSCHNIKOVII IN AREQUIPA, PERU

In April 1994, Vibrio metschnikovii was isolated from five infants wit h watery diarrhoea in Arequipa, Peru, as part of a passive cholera sur veillance system, The children ranged in age from 11 to 20 months and had acute diarrhoea, with two cases showing moderate dehydration, Two children also had traces of blood in liquid stool, The children were s een at two different hospitals, and no evidence of a common source of infection was found, No additional V. metschnikovii isolates were iden tified in the remaining surveillance period that covered the rest of 1 994 and 1995, However, stool samples were not screened for enteric pat hogens other than vibrios, V. metschnikovii strains isolated from stoo l samples produced opaque and translucent colonies on agar plates, sug gesting capsular material, All isolates were resistant to ampicillin, erythromycin and streptomycin, Plasmid analysis revealed a common 200- kb plasmid in isolates from all cases and an additional 2.7-kb plasmid in three of the isolates, Ribotyping of each isolate after restrictio n with BglI and HindIII endonucleases demonstrated identical ribotypin g patterns, The cases reported suggest that V. metschnikovii may be as sociated with diarrhoea in man by mechanisms so far unknown.