Vibrio vulnificus is a gram-negative marine bacterium that may cause local wound infection, distinctive soft tissue infection, gastroenteritis and septicaemia with a high mortality rate. A healthy man presented with severe abdominal pain, diarrhoea and fever followed by development of multiple blisters, cellulitis and necrotizing fasciitis of the lower limbs, who progressed rapidly to fulminant sepsis caused by this organism. Vibrio vulnificus septicaemia should be suspected in the presence of sepsis and progressive soft-tissue infection with recent history of raw seafood consumption.
Vibrio vulnificus is a highly invasive human pathogen that exists naturally in estuarine environment and coastal waters. In this study, we used different PCR assays to detect V. vulnificus in 260 seafood and 80 seawater samples. V. vulnificus was present in about 34 (13%) of the 260 seafood samples and 18 (23%) of the 80 seawater samples. Repetitive extragenic palindromic PCR (REP-PCR) and enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus PCR (ERIC-PCR) were applied to subtype the V. vulnificus isolates. Twenty-five REP profiles and 45 ERIC profiles were observed, and the isolates were categorized into 9 and 10 distinct clusters at the similarity of 80%, by REP-PCR and ERIC-PCR, respectively. ERIC-PCR is more discriminative than REP-PCR in subtyping V. vulnificus, demonstrating high genetic diversity among the isolates.