Detection of Some Virulence Factors Genes in Clinical Isolates of Enterococcus faecalis

Abstract

Nosocomial infections, caused by Enterococcus faecalis play a major role in causing a variety of infections, including endocarditis, urinary tract infections, and chronic root canal infections. E. faecalis has a selective virulence factors regulated by multiple genes such as hemolysin (cylA), gelatinase (gel E), andadhesion of collagen from E. faecalis (ace).The aim of current work was to study some of virulence factors in local clinical enterococcal isolates and detection for some genes at molecular level that encodes to these virulence traits,furthermore the correlation between these virulence factors phenotypically and genotypically was also studied.  The obtained bacterial (65) isolates were subjected to some virulence factors tests like production of gelatinase, hemolysin and biofilm formation. Fifty (50) isolates out of (65) were gelatinase positive,44 isolates were beta hemolysis, 12 isolates were alpha hemolysis and 9 isolates were gamma hemolysis.The results of biofilm production showed that only 1 isolate non biofilm producer and the rest isolates(64) revealed different categories of biofilm production.The molecular detection assay for selected isolates (15) showed that 73.3% of selected isolates were gelEpositive ,40% of selected isolates were cylA positive and 93.3% of selected isolates were ace positive. Besides the correlation between these virulence traits was also studied statistically.strong relationshipbetween biofilm (ace) phenotype and this genotypic factor (p value 0.002). While Hemolysin Gen. appears unrelated to hemolysin phenotype in this context (p value 0.241), Biofilm (ace) Gen. demonstrates a non-significant association with hemolysin phenotype (p value 0.875).It was observed that there was a distinct variation in virulence, taking into consideration the technique employed and the outcomes produced.