Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Molecular Epidemiology Of A Fast-Food Restaurant-Associated Outbreak Of Escherichia Coli O157:H7 In Washington State, Linda M. Grimm, Marcia Goldoft, John Kobayashi, Jay H. Lewis, Dalia Alfi, Ann Marie Perdichizzi, Phillip I. Tarr, Jerry E. Ongerth, Steve L. Moseley, Mansour Samadpour

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

We studied the molecular epidemiology of the recent fast-food restaurant chain-associated Escherichia coli O157:H7 outbreak in Washington State. Genomic DNAs prepared from strains isolated from 433 patients were probed with radiolabelled Shiga-like toxin (SLT) I and SLT II genes and bacteriophage l DNA and were subsequently analyzed for their restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) patterns. The SLT RFLP and l RFLP profiles of an E. coli O157:H7 strain isolated from the incriminated beef and prototype patient were compared with those of the patient isolates for determination of the concordance between patterns. Of the 377 patients with primary and secondary cases …