Abstract
A total of 88 domestic and import chickens were subjected for vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE). VanA type VRE were detected from one Brazilian chicken and two Thai chickens. VanC type VRE were detected from one Chinese chicken, four Brazilian chickens and eleven Japanese chickens. The MIC value of VanA type VRE strains were hyper resistance to vancomycin (>256μg/ml) and susceptible to teicoplanin (<6μg/ml). VanA type VRE strains isolated from chickens were analyzed by PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP), using four kinds of restriction endonucleases. The result suggested that these strains showed the same DNA banding pattern. According to the result of randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD), two strains of VanA type VRE detected from Thai chickens one seemed to be the same DNA banding pattern and the other different DNA anding pattern from Brazilian strain. According to the result of pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), three strains of VanA type VRE were a kind of different DNA banding pattern. VanC type VRE strains indicated individual pattern using RAPD and PFGE, and were not able to be distinguished between Japanese and import strains. Our investigation shows that VRE were detected from domestic and import chickens, and had already been confirmed to be distributing the contaminated chickens throughout the country.
