The prevalence of Aeromonas hydrophila in a local wet market was studied and fingerprinting was used to prove the cross-contamination.
This study describes the use of
antibiotic-resistant plasmid profiles and random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) assay to characterize strains of A.
hydrophila. Almost all strains had multiple antibiotic resistances and carried small plasmid(s) of 1.4–6.0 MDa that enabled the A. hydrophila to be grouped into eight plasmid patterns.
The RAPD-polymerase chain reaction profiles observed after electrophoretic separation of the amplified products using primer GEN15007, which enable the A. hydrophila strains to be grouped into three clusters, demonstrate that the A. hydrophila strains were genetically heterogeneous. These results suggest that RAPD assay could be a valuable tool for epidemiological studies. In addition, antibiotic-resistant and plasmid profiling can also be used as adjunct tools in this study.