title: Discriminatory power and usefulness of pulsed-field gel electrophoresis in epidemiological studies of Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
abstract: We assessed the discriminatory power of pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) for the analysis of DNA restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. We determined DraI PFGE-RFLP of DNA of unrelated clinical and environmental strains, and clinical strains isolated from two intensive care units of the Besançon University Hospital. The typeability and reproducibility was 100%. The discriminatory index was 0.998, and the DNA patterns were stable in vitro and in vivo. There was a very low correlation between PFGE-RFLP and traditional typing methods. The typeability, reproducibility, the high discriminatory power and the stability of PFGE-RFLP make this a valuable method to be used in conjunction with serotyping. Further standardization and quantitative interpretation are possible and should lead to this technique becoming a library typing system.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Bactériologie-Hygiène, Faculté de médecine, Hôpital Jean Minjoz, Besançon, France.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Talon
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Cailleaux
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Thouverez
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Michel-Briand
mesh_terms: D015373:Bacterial Typing Techniques; D004269:DNA, Bacterial / Q000235:genetics; D016521:Electrophoresis, Gel, Pulsed-Field; D004812:Epidemiologic Methods; D006801:Humans; D010641:Phenotype; D012150:Polymorphism, Restriction Fragment Length; D011550:Pseudomonas aeruginosa / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification; D015203:Reproducibility of Results
chemical_list: D004269:DNA, Bacterial