Lack of agreement between biochemical and genetic identification of Aeromonas spp.

Biochemical and genetic identification by RFLP (restriction fragment length polymorphism) of the PCR-amplified 16S r-RNA sequence were compared for a selection of 171 clinical and environmental isolates of Aeromonas spp. The investigation revealed large differences between the two methods. The species phenotypic identification scheme and the genetic technique applied to the environmental strains gave divergent results for 96% of the strains tested. There was 46% discrepancy between the two methods for the clinical isolates. The distribution of species differed between clinical and environmental isolates. A. hydrophila, A. caviae, A. jandaei and A. veronii dominated the clinical material (81% of isolates by RFLP), whilst only 21% of the environmental isolates belonged to those four species. From the environmental group A. salmonicida, A. bestiarum, A. sobria, A. media, and A. encheleia contributed 72% of the strains tested. The poor parity between the biochemical and the genetic identification of the environmental isolates, and to a lesser extent for the clinical isolates, underlines the fact that our current biochemical methods cannot adequately differentiate Aeromonas spp. This work also shows that the biochemical schemes derived from clinical isolates are incomplete for the identification of environmental strains.