Plasmid DNA profiles, a useful tool for tracing hospital bacterial cross-infection

ABSTRACT

One hundred and eighty five Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates were isolated from hospital cross-infections events. Almost all had similar antimicrobial susceptibility patterns. One hundred and twenty isolates, however, were found to harbour plasmids. Analyzing the plasmid profiles of these isolates allowed the construction of a very important and useful genetic pool profile for Klebsiella pneumoniae plasmids. This useful data allowed tracing several episodes of cross-infections outbreaks at a central hospital