2018 Volume 67 Issue 1 Pages 78-83
To diagnose bacterial enteritis, bacteria are cultivated from fecal specimens, but in many cases, the culture needs 3 to 5 days to grow. In cooperation with the pediatrics department, we rapidly detected Escherichia coli, which causes enterohemorrhagic colitis, and Salmonella and Campylobacter, which cause enteritis, as the representative bacteria causing digestive diseases in children, by direct polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis of stool specimens. Stool specimens from eight cases (rapid method group) requiring hospitalizations in the pediatric department of our hospital from March 2015 to November 2016, in which bacterial enteritis was suspected, were subjected to direct PCR analysis and a culture method. Nine cases (conventional method group) from 2011 to 2015 were diagnosed only by stool culture. The diagnosis time by direct PCR analysis was within 3 to 5 hours (average 0.20 days). In contrast, the mean diagnosis times were 3.68 and 4.22 days for the cultivation of stool specimens from the rapid method group and the conventional method group, respectively. There was no significant difference in the diagnosis time between the rapid method group and the conventional method group using culture methods, but there was a significant difference between the diagnosis times using PCR versus culture (p < 0.001). Furthermore, a significant difference was observed in the hospitalization period between the rapid method group and the conventional method group (p < 0.005). The use of direct PCR analysis of fecal specimens, which gives results in hours, contributed to the shortening of the diagnosis time and the hospitalization period compared with the culture method, which requires several days to obtain a result.
