Mina Eghbali; Majid Baserisalehi; Masood Ghane
Volume 21, Issue 1 , 2019, Pages 2-7
Abstract
Background: Moraxella catarrhalis is an opportunistic bacterium that has pathogenicity in the human respiratory tract. The ratesof colonization and infection of this bacterium are high in the respiratory tract of children and the elderly.Methods: In this descriptive cross-sectional study conducted from ...
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Background: Moraxella catarrhalis is an opportunistic bacterium that has pathogenicity in the human respiratory tract. The ratesof colonization and infection of this bacterium are high in the respiratory tract of children and the elderly.Methods: In this descriptive cross-sectional study conducted from April 2016 to March 2018, 400 samples were collected from patients with pharyngitis (n = 92), sinusitis (n = 85), otitis media (n = 43), respiratory failure (n = 60), and healthy individuals as thecontrol group (n = 120) in the Northern part of Iran. The isolates were identified by phenotyping methods. Finally, the virulencegenes in the isolates were detected by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique.Results: Out of a total number of 400 samples, 32 samples (8%) were positive for M. catarrhalis. The frequency of this bacterium wasfound to be different in patients with pharyngitis as 5.44%, sinusitis as 8.24%, otitis media as 13.95%, respiratory failure as 15%, andin the control group as 4.16%. Since the P value from the Chi-square test was higher than 0.05, there was no relationship betweenthe prevalence of M. catarrhalis and the type of the disease and control group. The PCR results showed that 100% of the isolates hadmcaP, ompJ, and ompCD genes. However, the distribution of other virulence genes was varied.Conclusions: Overall, our findings verified the existence of M. catarrhalis in patients with respiratory diseases. Therefore, the rapididentification and successful treatment can play an important role in preventing their spread. In addition, the results verified thehigh prevalence of virulence genes in M. catarrhalis isolates from patients compared to controls. Regarding the results of this studyand by comparing with similar studies, it can be concluded that the frequency of pathogenic isolates may be different even in regions that are not geographically different
