Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Detection of strain variation in isolates of Rhodococcus equi from an affected foal using repetitive sequence-based polymerase chain reaction.
- Journal:
- Journal of veterinary diagnostic investigation : official publication of the American Association of Veterinary Laboratory Diagnosticians, Inc
- Year:
- 2010
- Authors:
- Bolton, Tim et al.
- Affiliation:
- Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences · United States
- Species:
- horse
Plain-English summary
Rhodococcus equi is a germ that can make young horses, especially those between 1 and 6 months old, very sick. In a study of one foal, researchers looked at samples taken from different parts of its body, including the lungs and lymph nodes in the abdomen, to see how many different types of this germ were present. They found six different types of R. equi in the samples, showing that the foal was infected with multiple strains of the germ. Some of these strains were even found in different parts of the body, indicating that the infection can spread within the foal. This study highlights how complex infections can be in foals and shows a new method for quickly identifying different strains of this pathogen.
Abstract
Rhodococcus equi is an important pathogen of foals aged 1-6 months. Evidence exists that foals are exposed to a wide diversity of R. equi strains in their environment. However, limited data are available regarding the extent to which genotypic variation exists among isolates infecting individual foals. Therefore, electrophoresis of repetitive sequence-based polymerase chain reaction (rep-PCR) amplicons in an automated microfluidics chip format was used to genotype 9 virulent R. equi isolates obtained from distinct anatomic locations in a single foal. Four of the isolates were obtained from different regions of the lung, and 5 were from abscessed intra-abdominal lymph nodes (LNs). Six distinct genotypes were identified among the 9 isolates. None of the pulmonary isolates was identical; however, a pulmonary isolate was found to be identical to an isolate recovered from a small intestinal LN, and another pulmonary isolate was identical to an isolate from a mesenteric LN. These results indicate that foals can be infected with multiple strains of virulent R. equi. Furthermore, identical strains can be found in multiple, remote anatomic locations in an infected foal, and this can occur for >1 strain in the same foal. The automated system used in the current study provided a rapid, reproducible, and discriminating method for typing R. equi isolates.
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Search related cases →Original publication: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20622235/