Although imipenem has in vitro activity against Enterococcus faecalis and Food and Drug Administration-approved indications for treatment of infections caused by this microorganism, there are no NCCLS guidelines for susceptibility testing of imipenem versus enterococci. Therefore, the in vitro activities of penicillin, ampicillin, imipenem, and vancomycin against 201 blood isolates of E. faecal...

s: Background: Multidrug-resistant Enterococci are major problem and are increasingly reported worldwide. Enterococcal infections have been associated with higher hospitalization costs and a higher number of related deaths. Treatment of multidrug-resistant enterococci has become a challenge in hospitals around the world due to the lack of reliable therapeutic options. So the present study was u...

In this project, enterococci from the digestive tracts of 260 houseflies (Musca domestica L.) collected from five restaurants were characterized. Houseflies frequently (97% of the flies were positive) carried enterococci (mean, 3.1 x 10(3) CFU/fly). Using multiplex PCR, 205 of 355 randomly selected enterococcal isolates were identified and characterized. The majority of these isolates were Ente...

CONTEXT Although existence of a probable association between glycopeptide and biocide resistance among enterococci has often been hypothesized, all studies conducted so far on this subject have been inconclusive. AIMS The aim of this study was to explore the possibility of the existence of an association between glycopeptide resistance and reduced susceptibility to biocides among Enterococcus...

AIMS Enterococcus faecalis is associated with a significant number of refractory endodontic infections. Previous studies report a prevalence of Ent. faecalis ranging from 24% up to 77% in teeth with failed endodontic treatment. The origin of the micro-organism remains unclear, as enterococci do not belong to the normal oral microflora. The aim of this study was to determine whether these entero...

A challenge panel of enterococci (n = 50) and staphylococci (n = 50), including 17 and 15 isolates that were nonsusceptible to linezolid, respectively, were tested with the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute broth microdilution and disk diffusion reference methods. In addition, all 100 isolates were tested in parallel by Etest (AB Biodisk, Solna, Sweden), MicroScan WalkAway (Dade, West...

As part of the SENTRY Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance Program, a total of 4998 strains of enterococci isolated from 1997 to 1999 were processed. The occurrence of enterococcal infections by species and site of infection was analyzed, as were the occurrence of vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) and their resistance phenotypes and genotypes. Trends in antimicrobial susceptibility to a v...

A transmission study was performed to investigate whether organ recipients suffer more transmissions of bacteria than do non-transplanted patients. We chose enterococci for molecular typing because of their high prevalence, transmissibility, and predominance in causing nosocomial infections. Patients staying longer than 48h in a cardiovascular surgery intensive care unit (ICU) were included in ...

Emerging drug resistance of the enterococci necessitates differentiation from group D streptococci and accurate species identification. MicroScan (Baxter Healthcare Corp., West Sacramento, Calif.) has recently developed a microdilution system for identification and antibiotic susceptibility testing of gram-positive cocci. To evaluate the ability of this system to identify Enterococcus species, ...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES We developed and evaluated the utility of a quadruplex Taqman real-time PCR assay that allows simultaneous identification of vancomycin-resistant genotypes and clinically relevant enterococci. MATERIALS AND METHODS The specificity of the assay was tested using reference strains of vancomycin-resistant and susceptible enterococci. In total, 193 clinical isolates were ...