title: Enterotoxigenic Klebsiella pneumoniae in acute childhood diarrhoea.
abstract: K. pneumoniae strains recovered as pure or predominant isolate from stool specimens of 50 children below three years of age, presenting with acute watery diarrhoea, were studied for heat-labile enterotoxin production. Twenty three (46%) of the 50 crude toxin concentrates showed positivity in rabbit ileal loops and skin permeability tests. Antigenically 17 (34%) and 20 (40%) of the toxin extracts reacted with immuno-purified anti H-LT antibody in latex particle agglutination and immuno-dot blot assays respectively. Polyacrylamide-gel electrophoresis, Western-blotting and enzyme-immunoassay revealed heat-labile enterotoxin and its subunits in 19 (68%) of 28 extracts tested. In 5 of 10 strains tested the toxigenicity could be transferred to recipient Escherichia coli J-35 in plasmid transfer experiments. Klebsiella induced enterotoxigenic diarrhoea and produced a heat-labile toxin which seems to be biologically, antigenically and possibly genetically related to the heat-labile toxin of the cholera-coli family.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Microbiology, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education & Research, Chandigarh.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Panigrahi
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Roy
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Chakrabarti
mesh_terms: D000208:Acute Disease; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003967:Diarrhea / Q000382:microbiology*; D003968:Diarrhea, Infantile / Q000382:microbiology*; D004768:Enterotoxins / Q000096:biosynthesis*; D005243:Feces / Q000382:microbiology; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007710:Klebsiella Infections / Q000382:microbiology*; D007711:Klebsiella pneumoniae / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D004768:Enterotoxins