The use of molecular diagnostics for pathogen detection in epidemiological studies have allowed us to get a wider view of the pathogens associated with diarrhea, but the presence of enteropathogens in asymptomatic individuals has raised several challenges in understanding the etiology of diarrhea, and the use of these platforms in clinical diagnosis as well. To characterize the presence of the most relevant bacterial enteropathogens in diarrheal episodes, we evaluated here the prevalence of diarrheagenic E. coli pathotypes, Salmonella spp., and Yersinia enterocolitica in stool samples of children with and without diarrhea using real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR). We found that the presence of genetic markers associated with bacterial pathogens was significantly higher in stool samples from the diarrhea group compared to the control (P < 0.001). Bacterial loads in samples positive for eae and aggR markers were also determined. Compared to samples from asymptomatic children, a significantly higher number of copies of the eae gene were found in diarrhea samples. Also, the presence of genetic markers associated with STEC strains with clinical significance was evaluated in eae-positive samples by high-throughput real-time PCR. The data presented herein demonstrated that asymptomatic children of an urban area in Brazil might be enteropathogen reservoirs, especially for STEC.

在流行病学研究中使用分子诊断技术进行病原体检测使我们能够更广泛地了解与腹泻有关的病原体，但是无症状个体中肠病原体的存在对理解腹泻的病因以及这些方法的使用提出了一些挑战。临床诊断平台。为了表征腹泻发作中最相关的细菌性肠病原体的存在，我们在这里评估了腹泻的发生率大肠杆菌 原型 沙门氏菌 spp。，和 小肠结肠炎耶尔森菌使用实时定量PCR（qPCR）对有腹泻和没有腹泻的儿童的粪便样本中的食物进行检测。我们发现，与对照组相比，腹泻组粪便样本中与细菌病原体相关的遗传标记的存在显着更高（P<0.001）。样品中的细菌负荷为ae 和 aggR还确定了标记。与无症状儿童的样本相比，该样本的拷贝数高得多ae在腹泻样品中发现了该基因。此外，还评估了与具有临床意义的STEC菌株相关的遗传标记ae高通量实时荧光定量PCR检测阳性样品。本文提供的数据表明，巴西城市地区的无症状儿童可能是肠病原体库，尤其是STEC。