Evaluation of phenotypic and genotypic markers for clinical strains of Acinetobacter baumannii

Acinetobacter baumannii is an important opportunistic pathogen that is rapidly evolving toward multidrug resistance and is involved in various nosocomial infections that are often severe. It strongly prompts the epidemiological study of A. baumannii infections. However, there is no a generally accepted typing scheme. Different genotypic and phenotypic procedures were evaluated for the characterization of clinical isolates of A. baumannii isolated from a community hospital of Rosario, Argentina (Hospital de Emergencias Clemente Alvarez, HECA), during a period of four years. These included PCR with degenerate oligonucleotide primers (DO-PCR), repetitive extragenic palindromic-PCR (REP-PCR), pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), and antibiotyping. Amongst individual methods, DO-PCR and PFGE were found the most suitable methods to discriminate A. baumannii clinical isolates [discriminatory indexes (D) of 0.98 and 0.96, respectively]. On the other hand, both antibiotyping and REP-PCR were much less discriminatory (D: 0.86 and 0.77, respectively). The combination of antibiotyping with any of the above genotypic procedures was found to largely increase D. In particular, the combination of DO-PCR and antibiotyping provided the best discriminatory method for epidemiological studies of A. baumannii. Combination of the different genotypic and phenotypic procedures allowed the inference of genetic relationships and dissemination of multidrug-resistant A. baumannii clones in HECA in the period 1994-1999. One particular strain, which showed sensibility to carbapenems, was found widely distributed in this hospital during 1994-1996. A different strain, showing additional resistance to carbapenems, rapidly disseminated in HECA in coincidence with the introduction of imipenem therapy in 1997.