Comparison of two Salmonella enteritidis phage typing schemes.

The comparison of two phage typing schemes for Salmonella enteritidis was performed. A total of 517 strains were phage-typed according to the schemes of Lalko [27] and Ward et al. [21]. Strains were isolated from food-poisoning outbreaks and other common sources in Poland, between 1986-1995. Above 99% of all strains tested were differentiated to the definitive phage type using the Lalko collection of typing phages. Phage types 1 and 7 (PTs 1, 7) were the most isolated. The typing phages of Ward enabled to assign 56.5% of all strains (a total of 14 phage types were presented), 37.1% - reacted with phages without showing any of the designated phage types and 6.4% were untypable. Phage type 8 (PT8) predominated. The majority of Salmonella enteritidis strains from one phage type outbreaks of Lalko presented different types of lytic reactions with the Ward phages. Only the correspondence of Salmonella enteritidis PT7 of Lalko with PT8 of Ward et al. [21] was observed.