JAC Advance Access published online on November 18, 2002
Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, doi:10.1093/jac/dkf229
© 2002 by The British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy
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In Brief
1 Servicio de Microbiología,
Hospital Ramón y Cajal, Carretera de Colmenar, km. 9.1,
Madrid 28034, Spain
* Corresponding author. E-mail: mcoque{at}hrc.insalud.es.
Received 22 May 2002
; revised 24 June 2002
; accepted 5 September 2002
The ability to colonize patients successfully may be
essential for the emergence and spread of resistant nosocomial
strains. We determined the presence of Esp, a surface protein involved in
colonization ability in Enterococcus faecalis,
in 96 Enterococcus faecium isolates from hospitalized
patients (77 PFGE clones), 33 faecal isolates from healthy volunteers
(32 clones) and 20 environmental isolates (20 clones). Esp was found
significantly more often in E. faecium isolated
from hospitalized patients than in isolates from the community setting
(26% versus 6%, P < 0.01)
and was significantly more common among ampicillin-resistant than
among ampicillin-susceptible strains (37% versus 4%, P < 0.001), regardless of the isolation
site. The frequency of the esp gene in the hospital
clearly correlates with antibiotic-resistant E. faecium clones.
This observation indicates that antibiotic-resistant variants may
frequently arise under antibiotic selective pressure among esp-positive
clones reaching ecological abundance in the nosocomial habitat.
Keywords: esp, Enterococcus
faecium, ampicillin
High occurrence of esp among ampicillin-resistant
and
vancomycin-susceptible Enterococcus faecium clones
from
hospitalized patients
2 Research Laboratory for Infectious
Diseases (LIO), National Institute of Public Health and the Environment
(RIVM) Bilthoven, The Netherlands
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