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Journal of Clinical Microbiology, Jun 1996, 1474-1480, Vol 34, No. 6
A Davin-Regli, D Monnet, P Saux, C Bosi, R Charrel, A Barthelemy and C Bollet
To evaluate the respective contributions of patient-to-patient transmission
and endogenous acquisition of Enterobacter aerogenes isolates, we conducted
a prospective epidemiologic study in two intensive care units (ICUs)
between May 1994 and April 1995. We collected a total of 185 E. aerogenes
isolates: 130 from 51 patients in a surgical ICU (SICU), 45 from 26
patients in a medical ICU (MICU), and 10 from the environments in these two
ICUs. All isolates were typed by random amplification of polymorphic DNA
and enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus PCR. Among the 175
clinical isolate, we observed 40 different profiles by random amplification
of polymorphic DNA and 36 different profiles by enterobacterial repetitive
intergenic consensus PCR. We identified a ubiquitous and prevalent clone,
corresponding to 58% of SICU and 41% of MICU clinical isolates. Three
epidemiologically related strains were specific to each ICU and represented
17% of SICU and 24% of MICU clinical isolates; unique type strains
represented 17 and 29% of SICU and MICU clinical isolates, respectively,
and E. aerogenes strains which were spread to a limited degree and which
were isolated less than five times during the 1-year study period
represented 8 and 6% of SICU and MICU clinical isolates, respectively. Our
results show that E. aerogenes is acquired in the ICU in three different
ways: patient-to-patient spread of a prevalent or an epidemiologically
related strain, acquisition de novo of a strain from patients' own flora,
and acquisition of a nonendemic strain followed by occasional
patient-to-patient transmission. The findings point out the importance of
patient-to-patient transmission in E. aerogenes acquisition and suggest
that changes in E. aerogenes ecology in the hospital have taken place
during the past decade.
Copyright © 1996 by the American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Molecular epidemiology of Enterobacter aerogenes acquisition: one-year prospective study in two intensive care units
Laboratoire de Microbiologie, Hopital Salvator, Marseille, France. <bollet@citi2.fr>
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