Salmonella Cerro isolated over the past twenty years from various sources in the US represent a single predominant pulsed-field gel electrophoresis type.

Salmonella Cerro prevalence in US dairy cattle has increased significantly during the past decade. Comparison of 237 Salmonella isolates collected from various human and animal sources between 1986 and 2009 using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, antimicrobial resistance typing, and spvA screening, showed very limited genetic diversity, indicating clonality of this serotype. Improved subtyping methods are clearly needed to analyze the potential emergence of this serotype. Our results thus emphasize the critical importance of population-based pathogen surveillance for the detection and characterization of potentially emerging pathogens, and caution to critically evaluate the adequacy of diagnostic tests for a given study population and diagnostic application.