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Rapid Identification of Viridans Streptococci by Mass Spectrometric Discrimination

Institute for Medical Microbiology and Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany,¹ Department of Microbial Pathogenesis, Helmholtz Center for Infection Research, GBF German Research Centre for Biotechnology, Braunschweig, Germany,² Institute for Biochemistry, School of Medicine, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany³

Received 13 March 2007/ Returned for modification 20 April 2007/ Accepted 29 May 2007

Viridans streptococci (VS) are responsible for several systemic diseases, such as endocarditis, abscesses, and septicemia. Unfortunately, species identification by conventional methods seems to be more difficult than species identification of other groups of bacteria. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the use of cell matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF-MS) for the rapid identification of 10 different species of VS. A total of 99 VS clinical isolates, 10 reference strains, and 20 strains from our in-house culture collection were analyzed by MALDI-TOF-MS. To evaluate the mass-spectrometric discrimination results, all strains were identified in parallel by phenotypic and genotypic methods. MALDI-TOF-MS identified 71 isolates as the mitis group, 23 as the anginosus group, and 5 as Streptococcus salivarius. Comparison of the species identification results obtained by the MALDI-TOF-MS analyses and with the phenotypic/genotypic identification systems showed 100% consistency at the species level. Thus, MALDI-TOF-MS seems to be a rapid and reliable method for the identification of species of VS from clinical samples.

Published ahead of print on 6 June 2007.

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