Effectiveness of enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus PCR and random amplified polymorphic DNA fingerprinting for Helicobacter pylori strain differentiation

The robustness and discriminatory power of the enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus (ERIC) and random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) fingerprinting methods were compared for detecting cases of mixed Helicobacter pylori infection in Peruvian shantytown residents. It was found that three RAPD test were required to achieve the discriminatory power of one ERIC test and that at least half of infected shantytown residents carried more then one Helicobacter pylori strain.