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Comparative Study
. 2015 Dec 15;12(12):15943-59.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph121215031.

Virulence Profiles of Vibrio vulnificus in German Coastal Waters, a Comparison of North Sea and Baltic Sea Isolates

Nadja Bier  1 , Claudia Jäckel  2 , Ralf Dieckmann  3 , Nicole Brennholt  4 , Simone I Böer  5 , Eckhard Strauch  6
Affiliations
Comparative Study

Virulence Profiles of Vibrio vulnificus in German Coastal Waters, a Comparison of North Sea and Baltic Sea Isolates

Nadja Bier et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

Vibrio vulnificus is a halophilic bacterium of coastal environments known for sporadically causing severe foodborne or wound infections. Global warming is expected to lead to a rising occurrence of V. vulnificus and an increasing incidence of human infections in Northern Europe. So far, infections in Germany were exclusively documented for the Baltic Sea coast, while no cases from the North Sea region have been reported. Regional variations in the prevalence of infections may be influenced by differences in the pathogenicity of V. vulnificus populations in both areas. This study aimed to compare the distribution of virulence-associated traits and genotypes among 101 V. vulnificus isolates from the Baltic Sea and North Sea in order to assess their pathogenicity potential. Furthermore, genetic relationships were examined by multilocus sequence typing (MLST). A high diversity of MLST sequences (74 sequence types) and differences regarding the presence of six potential pathogenicity markers were observed in the V. vulnificus populations of both areas. Strains with genotypes and markers associated with pathogenicity are not restricted to a particular geographic region. This indicates that lack of reported cases in the North Sea region is not caused by the absence of potentially pathogenic strains.

Keywords: genotypes; global warming; multilocus sequence typing; pathogenicity potential; public health risk; vibrio infection; virulence-associated traits.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Geographical location of sampling sites along the North Sea and Baltic Sea coastline. For detailed information on sampling sites, refer to Supplementary Table S1. Grey dots indicate sampling sites at which strains of MLST cluster II have been isolated at least once. White dots represent sampling sites at which all isolated strains belonged to MLST cluster I. Sampling Sites 3, 5 and 6 are located in estuaries, rivers are not indicated in the map.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Population structure of V. vulnificus biotype 1 isolates from the North Sea and Baltic Sea obtained by goeBURST analysis based on MLST allelic profiles. Each sequence type (ST) is displayed as a circle with a size proportional to the number of isolates by which it is represented. The different colors indicate the geographical origin: North Sea (green) and Baltic Sea (blue). Single locus variants (SLVs) are connected via black lines. Light green halos around the circles indicate the respective founder of the group. (A) Population snapshot based on MLST allelic profiles. Clonal complexes (CC1–CC7) formed at the SLV level are highlighted by black edging; (B) Full Minimum Spanning Tree based on MLST allelic profiles. The number of different alleles between two STs is shown next to the connection lines.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Population structure of V. vulnificus biotype 1 isolates from the North Sea and Baltic Sea obtained by goeBURST analysis based on MLST allelic profiles. Each sequence type (ST) is displayed as a circle with a size proportional to the number of isolates by which it is represented. The different colors indicate the geographical origin: North Sea (green) and Baltic Sea (blue). Single locus variants (SLVs) are connected via black lines. Light green halos around the circles indicate the respective founder of the group. (A) Population snapshot based on MLST allelic profiles. Clonal complexes (CC1–CC7) formed at the SLV level are highlighted by black edging; (B) Full Minimum Spanning Tree based on MLST allelic profiles. The number of different alleles between two STs is shown next to the connection lines.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Population structure of V. vulnificus biotype 1 isolates from the North Sea (▲) and Baltic Sea (●) based on concatenated MLST sequences of ten housekeeping genes. Bootstrap values above 70% are shown next to the branches. Semicircles around the tree highlight the association of strains to MLST cluster I (white), IIA (grey), and IIB (black). Sequences from clinical (□) and environmental (○) Baltic Sea isolates from a previous study [11] were included for comparison.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Combined results of MLST analysis and the investigation of virulence-associated traits and genotypes among V. vulnificus isolates from the Baltic Sea (A) and the North Sea (B). Presence of a pathogenicity marker is indicated by a black box. Strains rated as resistant (growth in 60%–80% human serum) are displayed as positive for serum resistance. Virulence profiles that have already been found in clinical isolates from the Baltic Sea region [11] are highlighted in grey. Risk Group 2 (RG2) comprises strains with two or more pathogenicity markers, while strains without or with one pathogenicity marker were assigned to Risk Group 1 (RG1) (see text). The figure was created using BioNumerics v7.5 (Applied Maths, Sint-Martens-Latem, Belgium).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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