Yersinia enterocolitica

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Yersinia enterocolitica
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Scientific classification OOjs UI icon edit-ltr.svg
Domain: Bacteria
Phylum: Pseudomonadota
Class: Gammaproteobacteria
Order: Enterobacterales
Family: Yersiniaceae
Genus: Yersinia
Species:
Y. enterocolitica
Binomial name
Yersinia enterocolitica
(Schleifstein & Coleman 1939)
Subspecies
  • subsp. enterocolitica
  • subsp. palearctica

Yersinia enterocolitica is a Gram-negative, rod-shaped bacterium, belonging to the family Yersiniaceae. It is motile at temperatures of 22–29°C (72–84°F), but becomes nonmotile at normal human body temperature. [1] [2] Y. enterocolitica infection causes the disease yersiniosis, which is an animal-borne disease occurring in humans, as well as in a wide array of animals such as cattle, deer, pigs, and birds. Many of these animals recover from the disease and become carriers; these are potential sources of contagion despite showing no signs of disease. [3] The bacterium infects the host by sticking to its cells using trimeric autotransporter adhesins.

Y. enterocolitica is widespread in nature, occurring in reservoirs ranging from the intestinal tracts of numerous mammals, avian species, cold-blooded species, and even from terrestrial and aquatic niches. Most environmental isolates are avirulent; however, isolates recovered from porcine sources contain human pathogenic serogroups. In addition, dogs, sheep, wild rodents, and environmental water may also be a reservoir of pathogenic Y. enterocolitica strains. Human pathogenic strains are usually confined to the intestinal tract and lead to enteritis/diarrhea. [4]

Clinical Identification

Within the genus Yersinia, only Y. pestis , Y. pseudotuberculosis , and certain strains of Y. enterocolitica are pathogenic for humans and certain animals. The other species are environmental in origin. [5]

Y. enterocolitica strains can be identified through the use of stool samples being grown on MacConkey plates and Yersinia Selective Agar. The MacConkey plates employ the fact that Y. enterocolitica is non-lactose fermenting, and therefore show up on the plates as 2mm translucent pale colonies. On Yersinia Selective Agar plates Y. enterocolitica produces 1.5mm colonies with a dark pink center and translucent border. [6] [5]

Y. enterocolitica is a heterogeneous group of strains, which are traditionally classified by biotyping into six biogroups on the basis of phenotypic characteristics, and by serotyping into more than 57 O serogroups, on the basis of their O (lipopolysaccharide or LPS) surface antigen. Five of the six biogroups (1B and 2–5) are regarded as pathogens. However, only a few of these serogroups have been associated with disease in either humans or animals. Strains that belong to serogroups O:3 (biogroup 4), O:5,27 (biogroups 2 and 3), O:8 (biogroup 1B), and O:9 (biogroup 2) are most frequently isolated worldwide from human samples. However, the most important Y. enterocolitica serogroup in many European countries is serogroup O:3 followed by O:9, whereas the serogroup O:8 is mainly detected in the United States.

Modes of Transmission

There have been six identified pathways of transmission of Yersinia enterocolitica. [7]

1. Foodborne Transmission: Yersinia enterocolitica has been isolated from various food items, including beef, oysters, fish, chocolate milk, but the main food transmission is through exposure to undercooked or raw pork.

2. Human-to-Human Transmission: Whilst very rare, cases of human-to-human transmission of Yersinia enterocolitica via diarrheal disease has been isolated and reported.

3. Animal-to-Human Transmission:Yersinia enterocolitica has been reported to spread through indirect and direct contactwith infected animals and their feces, most notably pig.

4. Waterborne Transmission: Yersinia enterocolitica is able to grow in cool aquatic environments, meaning that indirectly contaminated water can cause the spread of the bacterium.

5. Direct Transmission: Whilst also very rare, there have been reported cases of direct inoculation of Yersinia enterocolitica resulting from traumatic punctures, suggesting environmental infection of Y. enterocolitica.

6. Blood Transfusion: Y. enterocolitica can be transmitted through contaminated blood, and can cause posttransfusion sepsis.

Signs and symptoms

The portal of entry is the gastrointestinal tract. The organism is acquired usually by insufficiently cooked pork or contaminated water, meat, or milk. In recent years Y. enterocolitica has increasingly been causing smaller outbreaks via ready-to-eat (RTE) vegetables. [8] Acute Y. enterocolitica infections usually lead to mild, self-limiting enterocolitis or terminal ileitis and adenitis in humans. Yersiniosis symptoms may include watery or bloody diarrhea and fever, resembling appendicitis, salmonellosis, or shigellosis. After oral uptake, Yersinia species replicate in the terminal ileum and invade Peyer's patches. From here, they can disseminate further to mesenteric lymph nodes causing lymphadenopathy. This condition can be confused with appendicitis, so is called pseudoappendicitis. In immunosuppressed individuals, they can disseminate from the gut to the liver and spleen and form abscesses. Because Yersinia species are siderophilic (iron-loving) bacteria, people with hereditary hemochromatosis (a disease resulting in high body iron levels) are more susceptible to infection with Yersinia (and other siderophilic bacteria). In fact, the most common contaminant of stored blood is Y. enterocolitica. [9]

Treatment

Yersiniosis is usually self-limiting and does not require treatment. For sepsis or severe focal infections, especially if associated with immunosuppression, the recommended regimen includes doxycycline in combination with an aminoglycoside. Other antibiotics active against Y. enterocolitica include trimethoprim-sulfamethoxasole, fluoroquinolones, ceftriaxone, and chloramphenicol. Y. enterocolitica is usually resistant to penicillin G, ampicillin, and cefalotin due to beta-lactamase production, but multidrug resistant strains have been reported in Europe. [8] [10] [11]

Prognosis

Y. enterocolitica infections are sometimes followed by chronic inflammatory diseases such as arthritis, [12] erythema nodosum, and reactive arthritis. This is most likely because of some immune-mediated mechanism. [13]

Y. enterocolitica seems to be associated with autoimmune Graves-Basedow thyroiditis. [14] Whilst indirect evidence exists, direct causative evidence is limited. [15] Y. enterocolitica is probably not a major cause of this disease, but may contribute to the development of thyroid autoimmunity arising for other reasons in genetically susceptible individuals. [16] Y. enterocolitica infection has also been suggested to be not the cause of autoimmune thyroid disease, but rather an associated condition, with both sharing a common inherited susceptibility. [17] More recently, the role for Y. enterocolitica has been disputed. [18]

Related Research Articles

<i>Yersinia pestis</i> Species of bacteria, cause of plague

Yersinia pestis is a gram-negative, non-motile, coccobacillus bacterium without spores that is related to both Yersinia enterocolitica and Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, the pathogen from which Y. pestis evolved and responsible for the Far East scarlet-like fever. It is a facultative anaerobic organism that can infect humans via the Oriental rat flea. It causes the disease plague, which caused the Plague of Justinian and the Black Death, the deadliest pandemic in recorded history. Plague takes three main forms: pneumonic, septicemic, and bubonic. Yersinia pestis is a parasite of its host, the rat flea, which is also a parasite of rats, hence Y. pestis is a hyperparasite.

<i>Yersinia</i> Genus of bacteria

Yersinia is a genus of bacteria in the family Yersiniaceae. Yersinia species are Gram-negative, coccobacilli bacteria, a few micrometers long and fractions of a micrometer in diameter, and are facultative anaerobes. Some members of Yersinia are pathogenic in humans; in particular, Y. pestis is the causative agent of the plague. Rodents are the natural reservoirs of Yersinia; less frequently, other mammals serve as the host. Infection may occur either through blood or in an alimentary fashion, occasionally via consumption of food products contaminated with infected urine or feces.

<i>Salmonella enterica</i> Species of bacterium

Salmonella enterica is a rod-shaped, flagellate, facultative anaerobic, Gram-negative bacterium and a species of the genus Salmonella. It is divided into six subspecies, arizonae (IIIa), diarizonae (IIIb), houtenae (IV), salamae (II), indica (VI), and enterica (I). A number of its serovars are serious human pathogens; many of them are serovars of Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica.

<i>Klebsiella pneumoniae</i> Species of bacterium

Klebsiella pneumoniae is a Gram-negative, non-motile, encapsulated, lactose-fermenting, facultative anaerobic, rod-shaped bacterium. It appears as a mucoid lactose fermenter on MacConkey agar.

<i>Pseudomonas aeruginosa</i> Species of bacterium

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a common encapsulated, Gram-negative, aerobic–facultatively anaerobic, rod-shaped bacterium that can cause disease in plants and animals, including humans. A species of considerable medical importance, P. aeruginosa is a multidrug resistant pathogen recognized for its ubiquity, its intrinsically advanced antibiotic resistance mechanisms, and its association with serious illnesses – hospital-acquired infections such as ventilator-associated pneumonia and various sepsis syndromes. P. aeruginosa is able to selectively inhibit various antibiotics from penetrating its outer membrane - and has high resistance to several antibiotics, according to the World Health Organization P. aeruginosa poses one of the greatest threats to humans in terms of antibiotic resistance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yersiniosis</span> Human disease

Yersiniosis is an infectious disease of the gastrointestinal tract caused by bacteria of the genus Yersinia other than Y. pestis. Most cases of yersiniosis in humans are caused by Y. enterocolitica, with a small minority being caused by Y. pseudotuberculosis. Rarely, other species of the genus can cause yersiniosis.

<i>Yersinia pseudotuberculosis</i> Species of bacterium

Yersinia pseudotuberculosis is a Gram-negative bacterium that causes Far East scarlet-like fever in humans, who occasionally get infected zoonotically, most often through the food-borne route. Animals are also infected by Y. pseudotuberculosis. The bacterium is urease positive.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Intimin</span>

Intimin is a virulence factor (adhesin) of EPEC and EHEC E. coli strains. It is an attaching and effacing (A/E) protein, which with other virulence factors is necessary and responsible for enteropathogenic and enterohaemorrhagic diarrhoea.

Enterococcus faecium is a Gram-positive, gamma-hemolytic or non-hemolytic bacterium in the genus Enterococcus. It can be commensal in the gastrointestinal tract of humans and animals, but it may also be pathogenic, causing diseases such as neonatal meningitis or endocarditis.

Pathogenomics is a field which uses high-throughput screening technology and bioinformatics to study encoded microbe resistance, as well as virulence factors (VFs), which enable a microorganism to infect a host and possibly cause disease. This includes studying genomes of pathogens which cannot be cultured outside of a host. In the past, researchers and medical professionals found it difficult to study and understand pathogenic traits of infectious organisms. With newer technology, pathogen genomes can be identified and sequenced in a much shorter time and at a lower cost, thus improving the ability to diagnose, treat, and even predict and prevent pathogenic infections and disease. It has also allowed researchers to better understand genome evolution events - gene loss, gain, duplication, rearrangement - and how those events impact pathogen resistance and ability to cause disease. This influx of information has created a need for bioinformatics tools and databases to analyze and make the vast amounts of data accessible to researchers, and it has raised ethical questions about the wisdom of reconstructing previously extinct and deadly pathogens in order to better understand virulence.

<i>Salmonella enterica <span style="font-style:normal;">subsp.</span> enterica</i> Subspecies of bacterium

Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica is a subspecies of Salmonella enterica, the rod-shaped, flagellated, aerobic, Gram-negative bacterium. Many of the pathogenic serovars of the S. enterica species are in this subspecies, including that responsible for typhoid.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yersiniabactin</span> Chemical compound

Yersiniabactin (Ybt) is a siderophore found in the pathogenic bacteria Yersinia pestis, Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, and Yersinia enterocolitica, as well as several strains of enterobacteria including enteropathogenic Escherichia coli and Salmonella enterica. Siderophores, compounds of low molecular mass with high affinities for ferric iron, are important virulence factors in pathogenic bacteria. Iron—an essential element for life used for such cellular processes as respiration and DNA replication—is extensively chelated by host proteins like lactoferrin and ferritin; thus, the pathogen produces molecules with an even higher affinity for Fe3+ than these proteins in order to acquire sufficient iron for growth. As a part of such an iron-uptake system, yersiniabactin plays an important role in pathogenicity of Y. pestis, Y. pseudotuberculosis, and Y. entercolitica.

Pathogenic <i>Escherichia coli</i> Strains of E. coli that can cause disease

Escherichia coli is a gram-negative, rod-shaped bacterium that is commonly found in the lower intestine of warm-blooded organisms (endotherms). Most E. coli strains are harmless, but pathogenic varieties cause serious food poisoning, septic shock, meningitis, or urinary tract infections in humans. Unlike normal flora E. coli, the pathogenic varieties produce toxins and other virulence factors that enable them to reside in parts of the body normally not inhabited by E. coli, and to damage host cells. These pathogenic traits are encoded by virulence genes carried only by the pathogens.

<i>Proteus penneri</i> Species of bacterium

Proteus penneri is a Gram-negative, facultatively anaerobic, rod-shaped bacterium. It is an invasive pathogen and a cause of nosocomial infections of the urinary tract or open wounds. Pathogens have been isolated mainly from the urine of patients with abnormalities in the urinary tract, and from stool. P. penneri strains are naturally resistant to numerous antibiotics, including penicillin G, amoxicillin, cephalosporins, oxacillin, and most macrolides, but are naturally sensitive to aminoglycosides, carbapenems, aztreonam, quinolones, sulphamethoxazole, and co-trimoxazole. Isolates of P. penneri have been found to be multiple drug-resistant (MDR) with resistance to six to eight drugs. β-lactamase production has also been identified in some isolates.

In biology, a pathogen, in the oldest and broadest sense, is any organism or agent that can produce disease. A pathogen may also be referred to as an infectious agent, or simply a germ.

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Yersinia bercovieri is a Gram-negative species of enteric bacteria.

Daniel A. Portnoy is a microbiologist, the Edward E. Penhoet Distinguished Chair in Global Public Health and Infectious Diseases, and a professor of biochemistry, Biophysics and Structural Biology in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology and in the Division of Microbiology in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is one of the world's foremost experts on Listeria monocytogenes, the bacterium that causes the severe foodborne illness Listeriosis. He has made seminal contributions to multiple aspects of bacterial pathogenesis, cell biology, innate immunity, and cell mediated immunity using L. monocytogenes as a model system and has helped to push forward the use of attenuated L. monocytogenes as an immunotherapeutic tool in the treatment of cancer.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virginia L. Miller</span> American microbiologist

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References

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  2. ↑ "Yersinia spp. | MicrobLog: Microbiology Training Log". microblog.me.uk. Retrieved 2016-02-10.
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  6. ↑ Barton, M.D. (2011), "Pathogens in Milk | Yersinia enterocolitica", Encyclopedia of Dairy Sciences, Elsevier, pp. 117–123, doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-374407-4.00398-8, ISBN   978-0-12-374407-4 , retrieved 2024-04-08
  7. ↑ Sabina, Yeasmin; Rahman, Atiqur; Ray, Ramesh Chandra; Montet, Didier (2011-09-07). "Yersinia enterocolitica: Mode of Transmission, Molecular Insights of Virulence, and Pathogenesis of Infection". Journal of Pathogens. 2011: e429069. doi: 10.4061/2011/429069 . ISSN   2090-3057. PMC   3335483 . PMID   22567333.
  8. 1 2 Karlsson, Philip A.; Tano, Eva; Jernberg, Cecilia; Hickman, Rachel A.; Guy, Lionel; Järhult, Josef D.; Wang, Helen (2021-05-13). "Molecular Characterization of Multidrug-Resistant Yersinia enterocolitica From Foodborne Outbreaks in Sweden". Frontiers in Microbiology. 12: 664665. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2021.664665 . ISSN   1664-302X. PMC   8155512 . PMID   34054769.
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  10. ↑ Karlsson, Philip A.; Hechard, Tifaine; Jernberg, Cecilia; Wang, Helen (2021-05-13). Rasko, David (ed.). "Complete Genome Assembly of Multidrug-Resistant Yersinia enterocolitica Y72, Isolated in Sweden". Microbiology Resource Announcements. 10 (19): e00264-21. doi: 10.1128/MRA.00264-21 . ISSN   2576-098X. PMC   8142573 . PMID   33986087.
  11. ↑ Bottone, Edward (April 1997). "Yersinia enterocolitica: the charisma continues". Clinical Microbiology Reviews. 10 (2): 257–276. doi:10.1128/CMR.10.2.257. PMC   172919 . PMID   9105754.
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  13. ↑ Hill Gaston JS, Lillicrap MS (2003). "Arthritis associated with enteric infection". Best Practice & Research Clinical Rheumatology. 17 (2): 219–39. doi:10.1016/S1521-6942(02)00104-3. PMID   12787523.
  14. ↑ Benvenga S, Santarpia L, Trimarchi F, Guarneri F (2006). "Human Thyroid Autoantigens and Proteins of Yersinia and Borrelia Share Amino Acid Sequence Homology That Includes Binding Motifs to HLA-DR Molecules and T-Cell Receptor". Thyroid. 16 (3): 225–236. doi:10.1089/thy.2006.16.225. PMID   16571084.
  15. ↑ Tomer Y, Davies T (1993). "Infection, thyroid disease, and autoimmunity" (PDF). Endocrine Reviews. 14 (1): 107–20. doi:10.1210/edrv-14-1-107. PMID   8491150.
  16. ↑ Toivanen P, Toivanen A (1994). "Does Yersinia induce autoimmunity?". International Archives of Allergy and Immunology. 104 (2): 107–11. doi:10.1159/000236717. PMID   8199453.
  17. ↑ Strieder T, Wenzel B, Prummel M, Tijssen J, Wiersinga W (2003). "Increased prevalence of antibodies to enteropathogenic Yersinia enterocolitica virulence proteins in relatives of patients with autoimmune thyroid disease". Clinical & Experimental Immunology. 132 (2): 278–82. doi:10.1046/j.1365-2249.2003.02139.x. PMC   1808711 . PMID   12699417.
  18. ↑ Hansen P, Wenzel B, Brix T, Hegedüs L (2006). "Yersinia enterocolitica infection does not confer an increased risk of thyroid antibodies: evidence from a Danish twin study". Clinical & Experimental Immunology. 146 (1): 32–8. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2249.2006.03183.x. PMC   1809723 . PMID   16968395.
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