Verotoxin producing Escherichia coli infections. Prevalence in children from the French Auvergne region.

Verotoxin producing Escherichia coli (VTEC) have been associated with disea se outbreaks of diarrhea, hemorrhagic colitis and hemolytic-uremic syndrome in humans. Contamination occurs mainly by ingestion of beef and dairy prod ucts, but water and person to person transmission have also been described. Most of the clinical signs are due to the production of Stx1 and/or Stx2 S higa toxins, also called verotoxins. Other virulence factors include entero hemolysin, and the product of the eae gene, intimin, involved in the attach ing and effacing adherence phenotype. The predominant serotype is O157:H7, but VTEC strains of more than one hundred serotypes can cause human disease . in order to determine the prevalence of VTEC infections among children in the central part of France, stool samples from hospitalized children were examined for stx1 and stx2 genes by using a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique. From October 1997 to September 1998, 658 stool samples were ana lysed: among them 19 (3 %) were stx-PCR positive. Only 8 children out of 19 had diarrhea, and for 5 of them, an enteric pathogen other than VTEC was i solated. VTEC strains were isolated from 10 samples: most of the isolates d id not produce verotoxins at a high level, and they did not belong to serot ypes associated with pathogenicity, which might explain the absence of rela tionship between VTEC isolation and pathogenicity in our study (C) 2000 Edi tions scientifiques et medicales Elsevier SAS.