Tohoku J. Exp. Med., 2001, 194 (4)

Enterobacterial Repetitive Intergenic Consensus
Sequence-Based PCR (ERIC-PCR); its Ability
to Differentiate Streptococcus pyogenes Strains
and Applicability to the Study of Outbreaks of
Streptococcal Infection

MASAKADO MATSUMOTO, YASUMOTO SUZUKI, YUTAKA MIYAZAKI, DAISUKE TANAKA,¹ TOMIHISA YASUOKA,² KYOKO MASHIKO,³ RYO-ICHI ISHIKITA⁴ and JUN-ICHI BABA⁴

Department of Microbiology, Aichi Prefectural Institute of Public Health, Nagoya 462-8576,
¹Department of Bacteriology, Toyama Institute of Health, Toyama 939-0363,
²Division of Infectious Diseases, Public Health Institute of Kochi Prefecture, Kochi 780-0850,
³Department of Microbiology, Ibaraki Prefectural Institute of Public Health, Ibaraki 310-0852, and
⁴Department of Microbiology, Fukuoka City Institute of Hygiene and Environment, Fukuoka 810-0065

We evaluated the ability of enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus sequence-based PCR (ERIC-PCR) to differentiate 95 Streptococcus pyogenes strains with M or T serotypes isolated from sporadic streptococcal infections as compared with M or T serotypings and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). Although the ERIC-PCR had less discriminatory power, defined as the ability to divide the strains with the same serotypes into the different sub-types, than PFGE, it consistently classified the strains into 16 patterns with a high correlation with M or T serotyping. The PCR method further discriminated 4 M or T serotypes into sub-types. The application of ERIC-PCR to 5 outbreaks of streptococcal infection produced the results that agreed closely with those of T serotyping and PFGE. ERIC-PCR has sufficient discriminatory power and is a quick and relatively easy technique, making it useful for routine epidemiological investigations.

Keywords —— enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus sequence (ERIC); PCR; Streptococcus pyogene

© 2001 Tohoku University Medical Press

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Tohoku J. Exp. Med., 2001, 194, 205-212

Address for reprints: Masakado Matsumoto, Ph.D., Department of Microbiology, Aichi Prefectural Institute of Public Health, Nagoya 462-8576, Japan.

e-mail: masakado_matsumoto@mail.pref.aichi.jp