BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to assess the prevalence of vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) in urinary isolates in North America, and the activity of various antibiotics against VRE. MATERIALS AND METHODS Twenty-eight medical centres in the United States and 10 centres in Canada assessed the prevalence of VRE in urinary isolates in 2002. Each study site was asked to collect up...

The genetic relationship of 81 ampicillin-resistant and 21 ampicillin-susceptible Enterococcus faecium isolates from clinical infections and rectal screening in hospitalized patients in Norway was studied by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP). PFGE showed 55 different banding patterns, and 65 of the isolates could be grouped into one large ...

We collected 705 isolates of enterococci (1 per patient) from cultures of a variety of anatomic sites from patients at eight tertiary-care hospitals in six geographic regions of the United States. A total of 632 (90%) Enterococcus faecalis, 58 (8%) E. faecium, 5 E. gallinarum, 4 E. avium, 3 E. casseliflavus, 1 E. raffinosus, and 1 E. hirae isolate and 1 biochemical variant of E. faecalis were i...

Three different methodologies, reduction of litmus milk (LM) and acidification of arabinose (ARA), acidification of methyl-alpha-D-glucopyranoside (MGP), and rapid motility (RM), for differentiating isolates of Enterococcus casseliflavus and Enterococcus gallinarum (intrinsically vancomycin-resistant enterococci [IVRE]) from Enterococcus faecalis and Enterococcus faecium were evaluated. All 33 ...

A total of 374 clinical isolates of Enterococcus spp. were characterized to determine the species distribution and vancomycin resistance. The ability of the Vitek system (bioMerieux Inc, Hazelwood, St. Louis, Mo.) to identify enterococci to the species level and to recognize vancomycin resistance by using computer software version 7.1 was evaluated. Conventional methods were used for identifica...

From 1995 to 2000, a total of 673 Enterococcus faecium and 1,088 Enterococcus faecalis isolates from pigs together with 856 E. faecium isolates from broilers were isolated and tested for susceptibility to four classes of antimicrobial agents used for growth promotion as part of the Danish program of monitoring for antimicrobial resistance. The four antimicrobials were avilamycin, erythromycin, ...

Most Enterococcus faecium isolates associated with hospital outbreaks and invasive infections belong to a distinct genetic subpopulation called clonal complex 17 (CC17). It has been postulated that the genetic evolution of CC17 involves the acquisition of various genes involved in antibiotic resistance, metabolic pathways, and virulence. To gain insight into additional genes that may have favor...

Background: Enterococci spp. bacteria especially Enterococcus faecalis and E. faecium have the ability to acquire antibiotic-resistance pattern and causing life-threatening hospital-acquired infections. So, the aim of this study was to count and isolate of E. faecalis and E. faecium from milk and dairy desserts consumed in Assiut city, Egypt. Methods: A total of 100 raw milk, ice cream, mehall...

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...

Ten isolates of Streptococcus faecalis and two isolates of S. faecium were studied together with an NCTC strain of each species. Antibiotic susceptibility tests showed different patterns of high-level resistance to aminoglycosides. Three S. faecalis strains were highly resistant to gentamicin and other aminoglycosides. By means of a filter membrane technique, transfer of high-level resistance t...