Presence of Multiple “Helicobacter heilmannii” Strains in an Individual Suffering from Ulcers and in His Two Cats

Circumstantial evidence suggests that “Helicobacter heilmannii” infection is an example of zoonosis. The presence of “H. heilmannii” strains in a human subject with acute gastric erosions, in his two cats, and in two unrelated cats was analyzed, and the genetic relatedness of the human and feline strains was assessed. A 580-bp, PCR-amplified sequence of “H. heilmannii” urease B gene (ureB) obtained from biopsies from the human subject and his two cats was restricted with AluI and cloned for sequencing. Analysis of the restriction fragment length polymorphism of the ureB-amplified product suggested the presence of different individual “H. heilmannii” strains in the cats and of three distinct strains in the human subject. One of the “H. heilmannii” ureB sequences amplified from the human subject’s biopsies was identical to that derived from one of his cats. The degree of similarity between the other “H. heilmannii” human and feline nucleotide sequences was higher than 97%. Most of the base substitutions were conservative. We conclude that human and animal “H. heilmannii” strains are closely related and that humans can be infected by more than one “H. heilmannii” strain, as has been observed for Helicobacter pylori.