PRESENCE OF MULTIPLE HELICOBACTER-HEILMANNII STRAINS IN AN INDIVIDUALSUFFERING FROM ULCERS AND IN HIS 2 CATS

Circumstantial evidence suggests that ''Helicobacter heilmannii'' infe ction is an example of zoonosis, The presence of ''H. heilmannii'' str ains in a human subject with acute gastric erosions, in his two cats, and in two unrelated cats was analyzed, and the genetic relatedness of the human and feline strains was assessed. A 580-bp, PCR-amplified se quence of ''H. heilmannii'' urease B gene (ureB) obtained from biopsie s from the human subject and his two cats was restricted with. AluI an d cloned for sequencing. Analysis of the restriction fragment length p olymorphism of the ureB-amplified product suggested the presence of di fferent individual ''H. heilmannii'' strains in the cats and of three distinct strains in the human subject. One of the ''H. heilmannii'' ur eB sequences amplified from the human subject's biopsies,vas identical to that derived from one of his cats. The degree of similarity betwee n the other ''H. heilmannii'' human and feline nucleotide sequences wa s higher than 97%. Most of the base substitutions were conservative. W e conclude that human and animal ''H. heilmannii'' strains are closely related and that humans can be infected by more than one ''H. heilman nii'' strain, as has been observed for Helicobacter pylori.