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Journal of Clinical Microbiology, July 1998, p. 1846-1852, Vol. 36, No. 7
Department of
Microbiology1 and
Infectious Diseases
Department,
Received 6 January 1998/Returned for modification 8 February
1998/Accepted 16 March 1998
In 1995, the rate of isolation of Enterobacter
aerogenes in the Saint-Pierre University Hospital in Brussels,
Belgium, was higher than that in the preceding years. A total of 45 nosocomial E. aerogenes strains were collected from 33 patients of different units during that year, and they were isolated
from 19 respiratory specimens, 13 pus specimens, 7 blood specimens, 4 urinary specimens, 1 catheter specimen, and 1 heparin vial. The strains
were analyzed to determine their epidemiological relatedness and were
characterized by their antibiotic resistance pattern determination,
plasmid profiling, and genomic fingerprinting by macrorestriction
analysis with pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). The majority of the strains (82%) were multiply resistant to different commonly used
antibiotics. Two major plasmid profiles were found: most strains (64%)
harbored two plasmids of different sizes, whereas the others (20%)
contained a single plasmid. PFGE with SpeI and/or XbaI restriction enzymes revealed that a single clone
(80%) was responsible for causing infections or colonizations
throughout the year, and this result was concordant with those obtained
by plasmid profiling, with slight variations. By comparing the results of these three methods, PFGE and plasmid profiling were found to be the
techniques best suited for investigating the epidemiological relatedness of E. aerogenes strains, and they are therefore
proposed as useful tools for the investigation of nosocomial outbreaks caused by this organism.
0095-1137/98/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1998, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Molecular Epidemiological Study of Nosocomial
Enterobacter aerogenes Isolates in a Belgian
Hospital
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of
Microbiology, Saint-Pierre University Hospital, Rue Haute 322, B-1000 Brussels, Belgium. Phone: 32-2-535.4530. Fax: 32-2-535.4656. E-mail: jbutzler{at}ben.vub.ac.be.
Journal of Clinical Microbiology, July 1998, p. 1846-1852, Vol. 36, No. 7
0095-1137/98/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1998, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
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