TRANSMISSION OF CANINE GASTRIC HELICOBACTER-SALOMONIS INFECTION FROM DAM TO OFFSPRING AND BETWEEN PUPPIES

H. bizzozeronii CCUG 35045, a new canine gastric Helicobacter spp. was used for experimental infection of four weaned puppies at 7 weeks of age. Controls were four nonchallenged puppies. The puppies originated from two dams which had Helicobacter salomonis infection in biopsy sam ples taken 3 weeks before the delivery but which had urease, brush cyt ology and culture-negative biopsy samples taken 7 weeks after antimicr obial treatment (metronidazole, amoxicillin, bismuth subcitrate). Both dams were detected urease- and Helicobacter-positive again three and a half months after therapy. Dam B was shown to be colonised with the similar genotype of H. salomonis for more than 2 years. Unexpectedly, H. salomonis was also cultured from gastric biopsy samples of the nonc hallenged puppies three times during 7 months. When H. salomonis isola tes of dams and puppies were studied by ribotyping (HaeIII, ClaI or Ps tI) they were shown to be identical although the HaeIII and PstI REA p atterns of dam A differed from the patterns of dam B and nonchallenged group by one fragment. PFGE pattern analysis of NotI digests, however , revealed that the isolates of the puppies were identical with the is olates of dam B, and differed from the isolates of dam A. The isolates of the dams and puppies in the nonchallenged group were metronidazole -resistant. The antimicrobial therapy had merely suppressed, but not e radicated, the infection of the dams. These studies suggested that pup pies may acquire gastric Helicobacter infection from dams during the l actation period and puppies can infect each other during their early l ife. PFGE pattern analysis was shown to be a more distinguishing metho d than ribotyping to study the similarity of the isolates. (C) 1998 El sevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.