Comparison of Enterohemorrhagie Escherichia coli (EHEC) O157 and EHEC Non-O157 Isolates from Patients with Diarrhea in Korea

We compared 47 enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) 0157 isolates with 184 EHEC non-0157 isolates from Korean patients with diarrhea. In the 0157 group, the strains harboring both Shiga toxin genes (stxl and stx2) were detected with highest frequency, whereas the strains harboring only stxl gene were most frequently detected in the non-0157 group. Eight virulence genes (eaeA, hlyA, ehx, iha, efal, tir, toxB, and espA) were found to show a higher frequency of occurrence in the 0157 group than in the non-0157 group. In addition, the symptom of bloody diarrhea was exhibited at a higher rate in the 0157 group (51.1%) than in the non-0157 group (16.8%). Our findings demonstrate that EHEC 0157 strains are more frequently implicated in cases of bloody diarrhea in the Korean population than EHEC non-0157 strains.