Geographic spread of vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) clones in cities, countries, or even continents has been identified by molecular techniques. This study aimed at characterizing virulent genes and determining genetic relatedness of 45 VRE isolates from Trinidad and Tobago using molecular tools, including polymerase chain reaction, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), and Random Am...

Streptococcus suis is a serious threat to swine industry and public health. In this work, a total of 62 S. suis isolates recovered from infected and healthy pigs from four provinces in northern China were classified by multilocus sequence typing into nine sequence types (STs), including six novel ones, namely, ST417, ST418, ST419, ST420, ST421, and ST422. The majority (64.5%) of these 62 isolat...

In the present study, a total of 455 enterococcal isolates, recovered from patients living in the city of Porto Alegre, State of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, during the period from July 1996 to June 1997, were identified to the species level by conventional biochemical and microbiological tests, and assayed for their susceptibilities to antimicrobial agents. The genetic diversity of antimicrobial...

Macrolide-resistant group A streptococci (MRGAS) have been recovered from many countries worldwide. However, the strain typing information that is available has been insufficient for estimating the total number of macrolide-resistant clones, their geographic distributions, and their evolutionary relationships. In this study, sequence-based strain typing was used to characterize 212 MRGAS isolat...

Vancomycin-resistance in enterococci (VRE) is associated with isolates within ST18, ST17, ST78 Enterococcus faecium (Efm) and ST6 Enterococcus faecalis (Efs) human adapted lineages. Despite of its global spread, vancomycin resistance rates in enterococcal populations greatly vary temporally and geographically. Portugal is one of the European countries where Tn1546 (vanA) is consistently found i...

BACKGROUND Macrolide resistance in Streptococcus pneumoniae (S. pneumoniae) is a worldwide problem. AIMS The aim of this work was to analyze the phenotypes, genotypes, and clonal relatedness among macrolide-resistant S. pneumoniae strains isolated from various clinical specimens in our hospital. STUDY DESIGN Cross-sectional study. METHODS 80 non-duplicate S. pneumoniae strains were analyz...

We analyzed 43 CTX-M-15-producing Escherichia coli isolates and 6 plasmids encoding the blaCTX-M-15 gene from Canada, India, Kuwait, France, Switzerland, Portugal, and Spain. Most isolates belonged to phylogroups B2 (50%) and D (25%). An EC-B2 strain of clonal complex sequence type (ST) 131 was detected in all countries; other B2 isolates corresponded to ST28, ST405, ST354, and ST695 from speci...

BACKGROUND The emergence of carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (CRAB) was observed in a Kenyan hospital from 2009 to 2010. Further investigation of the dissemination of CRAB isolates and the molecular characterization of associated resistance determinants were therefore performed. METHODS Antibiotic susceptibilities were determined by broth microdilution and Etest. Metallo-β-lactama...

Frequent use of carbapenems has contributed to the increase to K. pneumoniae strains resistant to this class of antibiotics (CRKP), causing a problem in the clinical treatment of patients. This investigation reports the epidemiology, genetic diversity, and clinical implication of the resistance to drugs mediated by CRKP in our hospital. A total of 280 K. pneumoniae strains were collected; in pa...

Acinetobacter baumannii is a troublesome opportunistic pathogen with a high capacity for clonal dissemination. We announce the establishment of a database for the ampC locus in A. baumannii, in which novel ampC alleles are differentiated based on the occurrence of ≥ 1 nucleotide change, regardless of whether it is silent or missense. The database is openly accessible at the pubmlst platform for...