This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowReprints and Permissions
Right arrow Copyright Information
Right arrow Books from ASM Press
Right arrow MicrobeWorld
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Willemse-Erix, D. F. M.
Right arrow Articles by Maquelin, K.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Willemse-Erix, D. F. M.
Right arrow Articles by Maquelin, K.

 Previous Article  |  Next Article 

Journal of Clinical Microbiology, March 2009, p. 652-659, Vol. 47, No. 3
0095-1137/09/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JCM.01900-08
Copyright © 2009, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Optical Fingerprinting in Bacterial Epidemiology: Raman Spectroscopy as a Real-Time Typing Method{triangledown}

Diana F. M. Willemse-Erix,1,2 Maarten J. Scholtes-Timmerman,2 Jan-Willem Jachtenberg,2 Willem B. van Leeuwen,1 Deborah Horst-Kreft,1 Tom C. Bakker Schut,2 Ruud H. Deurenberg,3 Gerwin J. Puppels,2 Alex van Belkum,1 Margreet C. Vos,1 and Kees Maquelin1,2*

Department of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands,1 Center for Optical Diagnostics and Therapy, Department of Dermatology, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands,2 Department of Medical Microbiology, Maastricht Infection Center (MINC), University Hospital Maastricht, Maastricht, The Netherlands3

Received 1 October 2008/ Returned for modification 28 November 2008/ Accepted 15 December 2008

Hospital-acquired infections (HAI) increase morbidity and mortality and constitute a high financial burden on health care systems. An effective weapon against HAI is early detection of potential outbreaks and sources of contamination. Such monitoring requires microbial typing with sufficient reproducibility and discriminatory power. Here, a microbial-typing method is presented, based on Raman spectroscopy. This technique provides strain-specific optical fingerprints in a few minutes instead of several hours to days, as is the case with genotyping methods. Although the method is generally applicable, we used 118 Staphylococcus aureus isolates to illustrate that the discriminatory power matches that of established genotyping techniques (numerical index of diversity [D] = 0.989) and that concordance with the gold standard (pulsed-field gel electrophoresis) is high (95%). The Raman clustering of isolates was reproducible to the strain level for five independent cultures, despite the various culture times from 18 h to 24 h. Furthermore, this technique was able to classify stored (–80°C) and recent isolates of a methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus-colonized individual during surveillance studies and did so days earlier than established genotyping techniques did. Its high throughput and ease of use make it suitable for use in routine diagnostic laboratory settings. This will set the stage for continuous, automated, real-time epidemiological monitoring of bacterial infections in a hospital, which can then be followed by timely corrective action by infection prevention teams.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Room Wk 331 (Westzeedijk), P.O. Box 2040, 3000 CA Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Phone: 31 (0)10 7043117. Fax: 31 (0)10 7043671. E-mail: k.maquelin{at}erasmusmc.nl

{triangledown} Published ahead of print on 24 December 2008.

Journal of Clinical Microbiology, March 2009, p. 652-659, Vol. 47, No. 3
0095-1137/09/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JCM.01900-08
Copyright © 2009, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.





Copyright © 2009 by the American Society for Microbiology.   For an alternate route to Journals.ASM.org, visit: http://intl-journals.asm.org | More Info»