STX2 and hemolytic-uremic syndrome: Furthermore, Fitzgerald et al., [57] reported that stx2-encoding bacteriophages were more frequently induced from STEC O157:H7 than stx2c. Also, previous reports on the molecular epidemiology of clinical STEC isolates have associated STEC strains that possess stx2 and stx2c with a higher likelihood of severe disease occurrence in humans including HUS [58, 59].