TY - JOUR AU - Chase-Topping, Margo AU - Rosser, Tracy AU - Allison, Lesley AU - Courcier, Emily AU - Evans, Judith AU - McKendrick, Iain AU - Pearce, Michael AU - Handel, Ian AU - Caprioli, Alfredo AU - Karch, Helge AU - Hanson, Mary AU - Pollock, Kevin G.J. AU - Locking, Mary AU - Woolhouse, Mark E.J. AU - Matthews, Louise AU - Low, J. Chris AU - Gally, David T1 - Pathogenic Potential to Humans of Bovine Escherichia coli O26, Scotland T2 - Emerging Infectious Disease journal PY - 2012 VL - 18 IS - 3 SP - 439 SN - 1080-6059 AB - Escherichia coli O26 and O157 have similar overall prevalences in cattle in Scotland, but in humans, Shiga toxin–producing E. coli O26 infections are fewer and clinically less severe than E. coli O157 infections. To investigate this discrepancy, we genotyped E. coli O26 isolates from cattle and humans in Scotland and continental Europe. The genetic background of some strains from Scotland was closely related to that of strains causing severe infections in Europe. Nonmetric multidimensional scaling found an association between hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) and multilocus sequence type 21 strains and confirmed the role of stx2 in severe human disease. Although the prevalences of E. coli O26 and O157 on cattle farms in Scotland are equivalent, prevalence of more virulent strains is low, reducing human infection risk. However, new data on E. coli O26–associated HUS in humans highlight the need for surveillance of non-O157 enterohemorrhagic E. coli and for understanding stx2 phage acquisition. KW - Escherichia coli O26 KW - Escherichia coli O157 KW - prevalence KW - pulsed-field gel electrophoresis KW - PFGE KW - multilocus sequence typing KW - MLST KW - nonmetric multidimensional scaling KW - NMS KW - bacteria KW - Scotland DO - 10.3201/eid1803.111236 UR - https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/18/3/11-1236_article ER - End of Reference