Escherichia coli enterotoxigena y campylobacter jejuni en el sindrome diarreico agudo en lactantes Chilenos / Enterotoxigenic escherichia coli and campylobacter jejuni in acute diarrheal syndrome in Chilean infants

ABSTRACT

An investigation carried out between the months of November 1982 and November 1983 looked at the frequency of isolation of enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli and Campylobacter jejuni compared with other enteropathogenic bacteria in 144 children under 2 years of age who had acute diarrhea and in 66 controls, all of them from lower socioeconomic strata, in a hospital and an outpatient office in Santiago, Chile. In addition, seasonal variations in frequency of the bacteria were determined. During the summer enteropathogenic bacteria were isolated in 64.7 per cent of the patients with diarrhea, while in winter this figure fell to 45.2 per cent. In the control group these proportions were 37.8 and 23.8 per cent, respectively (p0.01). Enteropathogenic E. coli was the bacterium that was isolated most frequently from sick infants (37.3 per cent in summer and 19.0 per cent in winter), followed by enterotoxigenic E. coli (21.6 and 19.0 per cent), several species of Shigella (12.7 and 4.8 per cent), C. jejuni (7.8 and 9.5. ), enteroinvasive E. coli (1.9 and 2.4 per cent), and various species of Salmonella (3.9 and 0 per cent); no strains of Yersinia were isolated. Infections caused by more than one enteropathogenic bacterium were observed in 19.6 per cent of the summer cases and 9.5 per cent of the winter ones