The prevalence of diarrhea-causing bacterial strains in Tehran, Iran

Diarrheal disease is one of the main causes of death in developing countries. This study was performed to the prevalence of bacterial causes of diarrhea in patients admitted to the Military hospitals and Imam Khomeini Medical Center Hospital. This cross-sectional study was conducted in a period of 9 months from June 2014 to February 2015, 435 non-duplicative diarrheal stool samples were collected from the Imam Reza, Besat Nahaja general, Khanevadeh Artesh and Imam Khomeini Medical Center Hospitals. To separation and differentiation bacterial species selective and differential medium was used. Of the 435 stool samples collected, 204 (46.9%) were female and 231 (53.1%) were men. The prevalence of Shigella, C. jejuni, Salmonella and EHEC were 98 (22.5%), 41 (9.4%), 21 (4.8%) and 6 (1.8%), respectively. The frequency of S. flexneri were 56.1% and S. sonnei were 4.9%. The prevalence of bacterial infection among cases of diarrhea was 22.5%, which the most infection rate was related to S. flexneri.