Analysis of the presence of ail, ystA and ystB genes in Yersinia enterocolitica strains isolated from aborting sows and aborted fetuses.

Forty-five Yersinia enterocolitica strains isolated from aborted fetuses and placentas and from vaginal and rectal swabs of aborting sows were subjected to serotyping, biochemical typing and polymerase chain reaction multiplex analyses to detect the presence of the ail, yst A and ystB genes. The isolates were recovered from the internal organs (tonsil, lung, liver, spleen, kidney, mesentheric lymph nodes, small intestine and rectal intestine) of 18 (18.6%) of 97 aborted fetuses examined, two (8%) of 25 aborted placentas and 27 (15.8%) of 172 examined aborting sows. Serotyping of Y. enterocolitica revealed that only six (13.3%) of the examined isolates belonged to serotype O:3, with a considerable number of isolates (31.1%) having serotype O:5, while biochemical studies showed that as many as 40 of the 45 strains belonged to biotype 1A. As expected, the Y. enterocolitica strains of bioserotype 4/O:3 contained ail and ystA genes, while strains of biotype 1A contained only the ystB gene.