The purpose of this study was to determine the antimicrobial activity and occurrence of bacteriocin structural genes in Enterococcus spp. isolated from different cheeses and also investigate some of their virulence factors. Enterococcus strains were isolated from 33 different cheeses. Enterococcus faecium (6 strains) and Enterococcus faecalis (5 strains) enterocin-producing strains were identif...

Antibiotic susceptibility was evaluated for 182 Enterococcus spp. isolated from Alheira, Chouriça de Vinhais and Salpicão de Vinhais, fermented meat products produced in the North of Portugal. Previously, a choice was made from a group of 1060 isolates, using phenotypic and genotypic tests. From these, 76 were previously identified as Enterococcus faecalis, 44 as Enterococcus faecium, one as En...

BACKGROUND Enterococci form a part of the normal flora of the intestinal tract, the oral cavity, and the vagina, but in recent times, they have become emerging nosocomial pathogens. Their increasing importance is largely due to their resistance to antimicrobials. The therapeutic failures in enterococcal infections are mainly due to the intrinsic as well as transferable drug resistance. The main...

INTRODUCTION Vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) among haemodialysis patients has increased rapidly and, to date, there is no report of this incidence in Portugal. METHODS A total of 121 faecal samples were collected from haemodialysis patients, and then tested for VRE. Antimicrobial resistance, virulence and multilocus sequence typing (MLST) were studied. RESULTS VRE prevalence was 3.3%...

OBJECTIVES The most prevalent type of acquired glycopeptide resistance is encoded by the vanA transposon Tn1546 located mainly on transferable plasmids in Enterococcus faecium. The limited occurrence in other species could be due to the lack of inter-species transferability and/or stability of Tn1546-containing plasmids in other species. We investigated the in vitro transferability of 14 pre-ch...

AIMS Isolate and characterize water enterococci from the South Nation River drainage basin, an area dominated by agriculture. METHODS AND RESULTS A total of 1558 enterococci were isolated from 204 water samples from the South Nation River obtained over a 3-year period. PCR was used to identify isolates to the species level and characterize them for carriage of 12 virulence determinants. Antib...

BACKGROUND Enterococcus is one of the major human pathogens able to acquire multiple antibiotic-resistant markers as well as virulence factors which also colonize remote ecosystems, including wild animals. In this work, we characterized the Enterococcus population colonizing the gut of Chilean Altiplano camelids without foreign human contact. MATERIAL AND METHODS Rectal swabs from 40 llamas a...

BACKGROUND Aminoglycosides are a group of antibiotics that have been widely used in the treatment of life-threatening infections of Gram-negative bacteria. OBJECTIVES This study aimed to evaluate the frequency of aminoglycoside resistance genes in Enterococcus and Salmonella strains isolated from clinical samples by PCR. MATERIALS AND METHODS In this study, 140 and 79 isolates of Enterococc...