Historically, most clinical microbiology laboratories report that 80 to 90% of enterococci are Enterococcus faecalis, whereas E. faecium accounts for 5 to 10% of isolates. At our medical center from 1993 to 2002, we evaluated the percentages of E. faecium among all enterococcal isolates and the percentages of E. faecium isolates that were vancomycin resistant. Over this 10-year period, the perc...

BACKGROUND Human skin is able to mount a fast response against invading microorganisms by the release of antimicrobial proteins such as the ribonuclease RNase 7. Because RNase 7 exhibits high activity against Enterococcus faecium the aim of this study was to further explore the role of RNase 7 in the cutaneous innate defense system against E. faecium. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Absolute q...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Enterococcus faecium is a normal bowel commensal and lactic acid bacterium that is rarely found in the oral cavity. This study investigated whether a non-pathogenic and non-biofilm strain of E. faecium functioned as a probiotic strain toward biofilm formation by Streptococcus mutans, which is an etiological agent for dental caries. METHODS The effects of E. faecium on s...

The incidence of infections with Enterococcus faecium is increasing worldwide. TLRs have been implicated in the recognition of pathogens and the initiation of an adequate innate immune response. We here sought to determine the roles of MyD88, the common adaptor protein involved in TLR signaling, TLR2, TLR4, and CD14 in host defense against E. faecium peritonitis. MyD88 knockout (KO) mice demons...

Reasons for the rising clinical impact of the bacterium Enterococcus faecium include the species' rapid acquisition of adaptive genetic elements. Here, we focused on the impact of recombination on the evolution of E. faecium. We used the recently developed BratNextGen algorithm to detect recombinant regions in the core genome of 34 E. faecium strains, including three newly sequenced clinical st...

From 1 January to 31 December 2013, 26 institutions around Australia participated in the Australian Enterococcal Sepsis Outcome Programme (AESOP). The aim of AESOP 2013 was to determine the proportion of enterococcal bacteraemia isolates in Australia that are antimicrobial resistant, and to characterise the molecular epidemiology of the Enterococcus faecium isolates. Of the 826 unique episodes ...

Ampicillin resistance has greatly contributed to the recent dramatic increase of a cluster of human adapted Enterococcus faecium lineages (ST17, ST18, and ST78) in hospital-based infections. Changes in the chromosomal pbp5 gene have been associated with different levels of ampicillin susceptibility, leading to protein variants (designated as PBP5 C-types to keep the nomenclature used in previou...

The interaction in the chick gut between Streptococcus faecium and its phage was examined. In conventional chicks, large numbers of S. faecium and phage were found in the cecum and smaller numbers were found in the anterior gut. In gnotobiotic chicks associated with S. faecium SY1 and its phage, there was no marked effect on bacterial numbers, but resistance to the phage rapidly developed. Depr...

According to the current edition of the Bergey's Manual of Systematic Bacteriology [11] the tyrosine decarboxylation test allows the differentiation of enterococci. Tyrosine is decarboxylated to the biogenic amine tyramine by E. faecalis and not by E. faecium strains. In the present study we sequenced the16S rDNA of two tyramine-producing strains, BIFI-56 and BIFI-58, presumptively classified a...