Survival of Acinetobacter baumannii on Dry Surfaces: Comparison of Outbreak and Sporadic Isolates

Author:

Jawad A.1,Seifert H.2,Snelling A. M.1,Heritage J.1,Hawkey P. M.1

Affiliation:

1. Department of Microbiology, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, United Kingdom,1 and

2. Institute for Medical Microbiology and Hygiene, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany2

Abstract

ABSTRACT Acinetobacter spp. are important nosocomial pathogens reported with increasing frequency in outbreaks of cross-infection during the past 2 decades. The majority of such outbreaks are caused by Acinetobacter baumannii . To investigate whether desiccation tolerance may be involved in the ability of certain strains of A. baumannii to cause hospital outbreaks, a blind study was carried out with 39 epidemiologically well-characterized clinical isolates of A. baumannii for which survival times were determined under simulated hospital conditions. The survival times on glass coverslips of 22 strains isolated from eight well-defined hospital outbreaks in a German metropolitan area were compared with the survival times of 17 sporadic strains not involved in outbreaks but rather isolated from inpatients in the same geographic area. All sporadic isolates have been shown by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis to represent different strain types. There was no statistically significant difference between the survival times of sporadic strains of A. baumannii and outbreak strains (27.2 versus 26.5 days, respectively; P ≤ 0.44) by the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test. All investigated A. baumannii strains, irrespective of their areas of endemicity or epidemic occurrence, have the ability to survive for a long time on dry surfaces. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing showed that A. baumannii outbreak strains were significantly more resistant to various broad-spectrum antimicrobial agents than sporadic strains. Both desiccation tolerance and multidrug resistance may contribute to their maintenance in the hospital setting and may explain in part their propensity to cause prolonged outbreaks of nosocomial infection.

Publisher

American Society for Microbiology

Subject

Microbiology (medical)

Reference34 articles.

1. Hospital outbreak of multi-resistant Acinetobacter anitratus: an airborne mode of spread?;Allen K. D.;J. Hosp. Infect.,1987

2. Epidemic bacteremia due to Acinetobacter baumannii in five intensive care units;Beck-Sagué C. M.;Am. J. Epidemiol.,1990

3. Acinetobacter spp. as nosocomial pathogens: microbiological, clinical, and epidemiological features

4. Outbreak of septicemia in neonates caused by Acinetobacter junii investigated by amplified ribosomal DNA restriction analysis (ARDRA) and four typing methods;Bernards A. T.;J. Hosp. Infect.,1997

5. Brown S. Bantar C. Young H. Amyes S. An outbreak of imipenem resistance in Acinetobacter strains from Buenos Aires Argentina abstr. C-122 Abstracts of the 36th Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. 1996 56 American Society for Microbiology Washington D.C

同舟云学术

1.学者识别学者识别

2.学术分析学术分析

3.人才评估人才评估

"同舟云学术"是以全球学者为主线,采集、加工和组织学术论文而形成的新型学术文献查询和分析系统,可以对全球学者进行文献检索和人才价值评估。用户可以通过关注某些学科领域的顶尖人物而持续追踪该领域的学科进展和研究前沿。经过近期的数据扩容,当前同舟云学术共收录了国内外主流学术期刊6万余种,收集的期刊论文及会议论文总量共计约1.5亿篇,并以每天添加12000余篇中外论文的速度递增。我们也可以为用户提供个性化、定制化的学者数据。欢迎来电咨询!咨询电话:010-8811{复制后删除}0370

www.globalauthorid.com

TOP

Copyright © 2019-2024 北京同舟云网络信息技术有限公司
京公网安备11010802033243号  京ICP备18003416号-3