engleski

Genotyping of carbapenem resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa clinical isolates by PFGE

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an important human pathogen, characterized by environmental versatility, ability to cause a wide range of human infections in susceptible individuals, and extensive antibiotic resistance. Genotyping of P. aeruginosa is an important tool for determining the spread of multi resistant strains of bacteria in the hospital environment. There are different methods available for the genotyping of P. aeruginosa today, however, pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) is still considered the "gold standard". The total of 56 clinical isolates of carbapenem resistant P. aeruginosa were collected from different departments of Clinical Hospital Center Rijeka, Croatia. O-serotype of isolates was determined, and antibiotic susceptibility to 12 antimicrobial agents was tested by disc-diffusion and E-test methods. Genotyping was performed by PFGE, after macrorestriction with SpeI restriction enzyme. Acquired PFGE data was analyzed by BioNumerics GelCompar II software (Applied Maths NV, Sint-Martens-Latem, Belgium). Typeability of isolates by PFGE was 98.2%, only 1 out of 56 samples could not be analyzed. PFGE analysis revealed 47 distinct profiles that were grouped in 6 groups, with 5 samples that were not assigned to any of the groups based on >80% similarity criterion. The largest group comprised 29 out of 55 isolates (52.7%). There were 3 more groups comprising 6, 5, and 5 isolates, respectively. Two more groups contained 2 isolates each, while there were 5 samples which could not be assigned to any group. The distribution of strains shows correlation with the location of hospital departments where the isolates were collected, which implies that most of the infections are the result of the spread of the epidemic strains of the bacteria within the hospital.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa; PFGE

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