Virulence profiles in uropathogenic Escherichia coli isolated from pregnant women and children with urinary tract abnormalities

Uropathogenic Escherichia coli is the leading etiologic agent of urinary tract infections, encompassing a highly heterogeneous group of strains. Although many putative urovirulence factors have been described, none of them appear in all uropathogenic E. coli strains, a fact that suggests that this group would be composed of different pathogenic subgroups. In this work, a study was performed on two collections of E. coli isolates proceeding from urine cultures from two groups of patients with urinary tract infection: pregnant women and children with urinary tract abnormalities. The isolates were analyzed for their virulence content and for their phylogeny by means of PCR determinations and of phenotypic assays. Associations among the virulence traits analyzed were searched for and this approach led to the identification of five urovirulence profiles. From a total of 230 isolates, 123 (53%) could be assigned to one of these profiles. A few loci appeared as markers of these profiles so that their presence allowed predicting the general virulence content of the strains. It is presumed that these conserved associations among the virulence functions would be devoted to ensure the coherence of the bacterial pathogenic strategy. In addition, three profiles appeared with significantly different frequencies depending on the host of origin of the isolates, indicating the existence of a correlation between the virulence content of the strains and their host specificity. ► A molecular epidemiology study was performed on UPEC isolates from two types of host. ► Conserved associations among virulence traits were searched for. ► Five urovirulence profiles were identified. ► Some urovirulence profiles exhibited different host specificity. ► Urovirulence markers allowed predicting the general virulence content of the strains.