title: Comparison of multilocus variable-number tandem-repeat analysis with multilocus sequence typing and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis for Enterococcus faecalis.
abstract: Enterococcus faecalis represents recently an important etiological agent of health care-associated infections (HAIs) and there is a need for evaluation and comparison of typing methods available for this microorganism. We tested multilocus VNTR (variable-number tandem repeats) analysis (MLVA) on a well-characterized collection of 153 clinical isolates of E. faecalis, corresponding to 52 multilocus sequence types and 67 pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) profiles. MLVA showed high discriminatory power, discerning 111 different types (diversity index equal 98.9%). The concordance MLVA/MLST and MLVA/PFGE was 0.95 and 0.74, respectively. High discriminatory power of MLVA indicates its utility for local epidemiology such as outbreak investigation, and for differentiation of clones defined by other methods.
authors.affiliation: National Medicines Institute, Warsaw, Poland. ewasadowy@cls.edu.pl
authors.forename: Ewa
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Sadowy
authors.forename: Aleksandra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sieńko
authors.forename: Waleria
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Hryniewicz
mesh_terms: D015373:Bacterial Typing Techniques; D016521:Electrophoresis, Gel, Pulsed-Field; D013293:Enterococcus faecalis / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics; D005798:Genes, Bacterial; D016908:Gram-Positive Bacterial Infections / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D018598:Minisatellite Repeats; D058885:Multilocus Sequence Typing