Conventional and molecular differentiation between capsular types of Pasteurella multocida isolated from various animal hosts

In this study, ten strains of P. multocida isolated from chicken, cattle, buffalo and sheep had a clinical manifestation of pneumonia were identified by species-specific PCR (PM-PCR) and 460bp products were obtained. Capsular typing of P. multocida is useful for epidemiological evidence and has been assessed by conventional and genotyping assays. According to the results, only one out of the ten strains (10%) which isolated from chicken was detected as capsular type D based on acriflavine test and did not detect the capsular type A for all the ten strains (0%) by using hyaluronidase test. PCR was applied to identify the capsular types using specific primers for each type of P. multocida. The findings of this study showed that a uniform amplicon size was corresponding to 657bp, 851bp and 510bp indicating that it belongs to capsular type D, type F and type E, respectively. So, the ten strains were identified to a one strain isolated from chicken as a type D (10%), one strain of which isolated from cattle as a type F (10%) and eight strains of which isolated from sheep, cattle, buffalo and chicken as a type E (80%). Likewise, the data of multiplex PCR showed that capsular type D, one strain; capsular type F, one strain and capsular type E, eight strains. Thus, the multiplex PCR can be used as a simple, sensitive, rapid, reliable technique for capsular typing identification of P. multocida. We concluded that the P. multocida serogroup E is common in Egypt and has a wide host range.