BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Clostridium difficile NAP1/ribotype 027 is associated with severe disease and high mortality rates. Our aim was to determine the prevalence of NAP1/ribotype 027 among C. difficile isolates in a tertiary care hospital, and review the main clinical data. METHODS We included 106 stool samples from 106 patients. Samples were tested for A&B toxins and were cultured on CCFA...

E. coli plays an important role in maintaining intestinal physiology. However, there are pathogenic strains that cause distinct syndromes of diarrheal disease. In this study we used a collection of 28 E. coli isolated from cattle, buffaloes and chicken obtained in the same geographical area to perform a detailed analysis of the molecular epidemiology of O157 and non O157 strains by using PCR fo...

Shigella sonnei is the most frequent cause of shigellosis in the United States. Epidemiologic studies of this organism have been hampered by the lack of adequate typing procedures. Ribosomal DNA analysis (ribotyping), a method which analyzes restriction fragment length polymorphisms in the chromosomal genes that encode rRNA, has recently been shown to be useful for microbial species identificat...

In order to evaluate the resolving power of several typing methods to identify relatedness among Brazilian strains of Enterobacter cloacae, we selected twenty isolates from different patients on three wards of a University Hospital (Orthopedics, Nephrology, and Hematology). Traditional phenotyping methods applied to isolates included biotyping, antibiotic sensitivity, phage-typing, and O-seroty...