title: Molecular epidemiology of hospital-acquired vancomycin-resistant enterococci.
abstract: Vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium strains are a significant cause of nosocomial infections in predisposed patients. Multiple-locus variable-number tandem repeat analysis (MLVA) has been validated recently by use of a global strain collection. In this report, we applied MLVA together with multilocus sequence typing (MLST) and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) to type 14 isolates from three clusters of patients colonized or infected with vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium and another 10 epidemiologically unrelated isolates from the same hospital. The clusters could be distinguished by all three typing methods, which proved to be concordant. PFGE patterns provided the highest resolution. We observed seven sequence types (ST), six MLVA types (MT), and nine distinct ST/MT combinations. The combination of MLST and MLVA may be an alternative to PFGE in hospital epidemiology, providing the benefits of high accuracy, reproducibility, and portability.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Hygiene and Microbiology, University of Würzburg, Germany. mhorn@hygiene.uni-wuerzburg.de
authors.forename: Marianne
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Abele-Horn
authors.forename: Ulrich
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Vogel
authors.forename: Ingo
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Klare
authors.forename: Carola
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Konstabel
authors.forename: Rene
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Trabold
authors.forename: Risa
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kurihara
authors.forename: Wolfgang
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Witte
authors.forename: Wolfgang
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Kreth
authors.forename: Paul-Gerhardt
authors.initials: PG
authors.lastname: Schlegel
authors.forename: Heike
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Claus
mesh_terms: D015373:Bacterial Typing Techniques / Q000379:methods*; D003428:Cross Infection / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000382:microbiology*; D016521:Electrophoresis, Gel, Pulsed-Field; D016983:Enterococcus / Q000145:classification* / Q000187:drug effects / Q000235:genetics; D006801:Humans; D018598:Minisatellite Repeats; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D013290:Streptococcal Infections / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000382:microbiology*; D020713:Vancomycin Resistance