In May 2016, there was a disease outbreak among pufferfish (Takifugu
rubripes) in a marine farm in Tianjin municipality, with the cumulative
mortality rate reaching 45% within 7 days from the beginning of the
outbreak. The main symptoms of the disease were abdominal and anal
swelling of the diseased fish. Significant damage was also observed
histopathologically in the intestine, liver, and kidney. The strain H008 was
isolated from diseased kidneys, and the challenge test revealed that the same
disease was diagnosed in pufferfish which suffered similarly high mortality
rates. Using physiological biochemical tests combined with 16S rDNA
sequence analysis, the strain was identified as Listonella anguillarum.
Antimicrobial susceptibility tests showed that H008 was resistant to 10 of 15
antimicrobial agents tested. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first
report of L. anguillarum causing disease in pufferfish
