Detection of colonisation factor antigen as a rapid screening test for enteropathogenic escherichia coli causing infantile diarrhea

ABSTRACT

In this study 75 E-coli pools isolated from 120 rectal swab taken from infants suffering from watery diarrhea were studied together with 18 E-coli pools isolated from healthy controls of the same age group. All these E-coli pools were tested for enteropathogenic serotypes, enterotoxigenicity, invasion,presence of colonisation factor antigen and colicine production. Comparing E-coli pools isolated from diarrheal - cases and controls; the incidence of colicinogenic E-coli pools were equally distributed in patients and control groups. The incidence of enterotoxigenic and of enteropathogenic serotypable E coli pools in diarrheal cases were about twice their incidence in the control group. The incidence of colonisation factor antigen in diarrheal E-coli pools was about seven times that in control group. The most commonly associated characters, were toxin production and colonisation factor antigen being three times as much as that in the control group [17.3%, 5.6%] respectively, this shows the importance of detection of colonisation factor antigen by mannose resistant haemagglutination of adult chicken red cells as a simple easily performed screening test for detection of enteropathogenic E-coli in infantile diarrheal cases