Genotyping of outbreak-associated and sporadic Yersinia pseudotuberculosis strains by novel multilocus variable-number tandem repeat analysis (MLVA)

• Yersinia pseudotuberculosis serotypes O:1 and O:3 are most common in Europe
• We developed a new genotyping method (MLVA) for Yersinia pseudotuberculosis
• The MLVA scheme discriminated serotypes O:1 and O:3 into several MLVA types
• All of the obtained MLVA profiles from 107 isolates were serotype-specific

Yersinia pseudotuberculosis human infections caused by serotype O:1 and O:3 isolates have been common in Finland and have also caused outbreaks. Epidemiological studies on the outbreaks have been limited by the lack of accurate typing methods. During the recent years, multilocus variable-number tandem repeat analysis (MLVA) has been successfully applied for molecular typing of several bacterial pathogens. We designed an MLVA scheme based on seven loci for Y. pseudotuberculosis. The method was able to discriminate clinical isolates of serotypes O:1 and O:3 into several MLVA types. The MLVA profiles were based on the number of 6 to 9 bp long tandem repeats in each locus. The number of repeats varied from 1 to 23 depending on the locus. The loci were all located in the bacterial chromosome for stability of the markers. The MLVA method developed was serotype-specific and will be a new additional tool for the epidemiological investigations of isolates associated with disease outbreaks and for comparison of sporadic isolates.