Toxinotyping ofStrains Recovered from U.S. Turkeys with Necrotic Enteritis.

Abstract

Necrotic enteritis (NE) is a serious disease of chickens and turkeys that causes significant economic losses to the poultry industry. On the basis of studies in chickens,type G is considered by many to be the cause of NE in poultry. However, studies on isolates from Finnish and Italian turkeys with NE revealed that the vast majority weretype A, and very few weretype G. We therefore examined 74isolates from U.S. turkeys with NE; 98% were type A and only 1% was type G. This result confirms that differenttypes are involved in NE in turkeys when compared with chickens. We also examined the turkey isolates for other toxin genes associated with enteritis in various animal species, namely,,,,, and. Thegene, which has been associated with enhanced virulence ofin chickens, was only found in 1% of turkey NE isolates. Thegene, which encodesenterotoxin (a major cause of food poisoning and non-foodborne-mediated diarrhea in humans) was also found in only 1% of our turkey NE isolates. Althoughwhich encodes for the beta2 toxin, was found in 73% of our NE isolates, it has also been found in similar percentages of isolates from turkeys with normal intestine. The, andgenes were not detected among ourisolates from turkeys.