title: Virulence and antimicrobial resistance in enterococci isolated from urinary tract infections.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Urinary tract infection (UTI) is the most common nosocomial infection among hospitalized patients. Meanwhile, most frequent infections involving enterococci affect the urinary tract. The aims of this study were to investigate the susceptibility pattern of isolated enterococci from UTI and the prevalence of virulence genes.
  
  
  METHODS
  The study used enterococci isolated from urinary tract infections obtained from 3 university teaching hospitals in Northwest Iran. The antimicrobial susceptibility of the strains was determined using the disc diffusion method. Multiplex PCR was performed for the detection of genus- species specific targets, and potential virulence genes.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Of 188 enterococcal isolates, 138 (73.4%) and 50 (26.6%) were Enterococcus faecalis and E. faecium, respectively. Antibiotic susceptibility testing showed high resistance to amikacin (86.2%), rifampicin (86.2%) and erythromycin (73.9%), irrespective of species. In total, 68.1% were positive for gelE, and 57.4%, 53.2%, 56.4%, and 52.1% of isolates were positive for cpd, asa1, ace, and esp, respectively.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The study revealed that most of UTI isolates were multidrug resistance against the antibiotics tested and antibiotic resistance was more common among E. faecium isolates than E. faecalis. A significant correlation was found between UTI and the presence of gelE among E. faecalis strains (p < 0.001).
authors: Department of Clinical Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, Urmia University of Medical Science, Urmia, Iran. ; Research Center of Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine, Tabriz University of Medical Science, Tabriz, Iran .
authors: Yaeghob
authors: Y
authors: Sharifi
authors: Alka
authors: A
authors: Hasani
authors: Reza
authors: R
authors: Ghotaslou
authors: Behrouz
authors: B
authors: Naghili
authors: Mohammad
authors: M
authors: Aghazadeh
authors: Mortaza
authors: M
authors: Milani
authors: Ahad
authors: A
authors: Bazmany
keywords: Enterococcus faecalis; Enterococcus faecium; Urinary tract infection; virulence genes