ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT Enterobacter cloacae and E. aerogenes have been increasingly reported as important opportunistic pathogens. In this study, a high prevalence of multi-drug resistant isolates from Brazil, harboring several β-lactamase encoding genes was found. Several virulence genes were observed in E. aerogenes, contrasting with the E. cloacae isolates which presented none.
Subject(s)
Humans , Male , Female , Adult , Middle Aged , Bacterial Proteins/metabolism , beta-Lactamases/metabolism , Enterobacter cloacae/isolation & purification , Enterobacter aerogenes/isolation & purification , Virulence Factors/metabolism , Enterobacteriaceae Infections/microbiology , Phylogeny , Bacterial Proteins/genetics , Virulence , beta-Lactamases/genetics , Brazil , Microbial Sensitivity Tests , Enterobacter cloacae/classification , Enterobacter cloacae/enzymology , Enterobacter cloacae/genetics , Enterobacter aerogenes/classification , Enterobacter aerogenes/enzymology , Enterobacter aerogenes/genetics , Virulence Factors/genetics , Middle Aged , Anti-Bacterial Agents/pharmacologyABSTRACT
In order to evaluate the resolving power of several typing methods to identify relatedness among Brazilian strains of Enterobacter cloacae, we selected twenty isolates from different patients on three wards of a University Hospital (Orthopedics, Nephrology, and Hematology). Traditional phenotyping methods applied to isolates included biotyping, antibiotic sensitivity, phage-typing, and O-serotyping. Plasmid profile analysis, ribotyping, and macrorestriction analysis by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) were used as genotyping methods. Sero- and phage-typing were not useful since the majority of isolates could not be subtyped by these methods. Biotyping, antibiogram and plasmid profile permitted us to classify the samples into different groups depending on the method used, and consequently were not reliable. Ribotyping and PFGE were significantly correlated with the clinical epidemiological analysis. PFGE did not type strains containing nonspecific DNase. Ribotyping was the most discriminative method for typing Brazilian isolates of E. cloacae