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Journal of Clinical Microbiology, June 1998, p. 1494-1500, Vol. 36, No. 6
0095-1137/98/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1998, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.

Molecular Typing of Environmental and Patient Isolates of Aspergillus fumigatus from Various Hospital Settings

Valérie Chazalet,1 Jean-Paul Debeaupuis,1 Jacqueline Sarfati,1 Jacques Lortholary,2 Patricia Ribaud,3 Pramod Shah,4 Muriel Cornet,5 Hoang Vu Thien,6 Eliane Gluckman,3 Gilles Brücker,2 and Jean-Paul Latgé1,*

Laboratoire des Aspergillus, Institut Pasteur, 75015 Paris,1 Assistance Publique Hôpitaux de Paris, SEHP, 75001 Paris,2 Unité de Greffe de Moelle Osseuse, Hôpital St Louis, 75010 Paris,3 Laboratoire de Microbiologie, Hôtel Dieu, 75004 Paris,5 and Laboratoire de Microbiologie, Hôpital Trousseau, 75012 Paris,6 France, and ZIM-Infektiologie, Universitäts Klinikum, 60590 Frankfurt, Germany4

Received 20 November 1997/Returned for modification 15 January 1998/Accepted 9 March 1998

Fingerprinting of more than 700 clinical and environmental isolates of Aspergillus fumigatus from four differential hospital settings was undertaken with a dispersed repeated DNA sequence. The analysis of the environmental isolates showed that the airborne A. fumigatus population is extremely diverse, with 85% of the strains being represented as a single genotype isolated once. The remaining 15% of the strains were isolated several times and were able to persist for several months in the same hospital environment. No strains were found to be associated with a specific location inside the hospital, and identical strains were isolated from different buildings of the hospital and outdoors. Isolation of the same strain both from patients and from the environment of the same hospital is highly suggestive of a nosocomial infection. The characteristics of the environmental fungal population explains the two main results obtained from the typing of the clinical isolates: (i) the absence of a common strain responsible for an invasive aspergillosis outbreak results from the extreme diversity of the environmental population of A. fumigatus in contact with the patients, and (ii) patients hospitalized in different wards of the same hospital can be infected with the same strain since every patient might inhale the same spore population.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Laboratoire des Aspergillus, Institut Pasteur, 25, rue du Dr Roux, 75724 Paris, France. Phone: 33-01-45-68-82-25. Fax: 33-01-40-61-34-19. E-mail: jplatge{at}pasteur.fr.

Journal of Clinical Microbiology, June 1998, p. 1494-1500, Vol. 36, No. 6
0095-1137/98/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1998, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.


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