Rapid identification of <i>Acinetobacter</i> spp. by fluorescence <i>in situ</i> hybridization (FISH) from colony and blood culture material

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Abstract

Multi-drug-resistant strains of the Acinetobacter baumannii complex cause nosocomial infections. Rapid identification of Acinetobacter spp. is desirable in order to facilitate therapeutic or hygiene decisions. We evaluated a newly designed DNA probe that can be used under standard conditions in both a microwave oven and a slide chamber for the rapid identification of Acinetobacter spp. by fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH). Using FISH, the new probe correctly identified 81/81 Acinetobacter spp. isolates and excluded 109/109 tested non-target organisms from agar culture. Furthermore, the new probe correctly identified 7/7 Acinetobacter spp. in 214 blood cultures determined to contain Gram-negative bacteria by Gram staining. Using either the microwave oven or slide chamber technique, the new probe was able to identify Acinetobacter spp. in 100% of the samples tested. FISH used in conjunction with our newly designed probe provides an easy, cheap, precise, and rapid method for the preliminary identification of Acinetobacter spp., especially in laboratories where more sophisticated methods like matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF-MS) are not available.

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Global spread of carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii.

Paul Higgins, Cathrin Dammhayn, Meredith Hackel … (2010)

We have investigated the molecular epidemiology and distribution of carbapenemase genes in 492 imipenem-non-susceptible Acinetobacter baumannii worldwide isolates (North and Latin America, Europe, Asia, South Africa and Australia). MICs were determined by broth microdilution and Etest. The presence of carbapenemase-encoding genes was investigated by PCR. Molecular epidemiology was performed by repetitive sequence-based PCR (rep-PCR; DiversiLab), sequence-type multiplex PCR and PFGE. Imipenem non-susceptibility was associated with ISAba1 upstream of the intrinsic bla(OXA-51-like) or the acquired carbapenemase bla(OXA-23-like), bla(OXA-40-like) or bla(OXA-58-like). Isolates were grouped into eight distinct clusters including European clones I, II and III. European clone II was the largest (246 isolates) and most widespread group (USA, pan-Europe, Israel, Asia, Australia and South Africa). The global dissemination of eight carbapenem-resistant lineages illustrates the success this organism has had in epidemic spread. The acquired OXA enzymes are widely distributed but are not the sole carbapenem resistance determinant in A. baumannii.

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Horizontal gene transfer in a polyclonal outbreak of carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii.

Jubelle Valenzuela, Lee Thomas, Sally Partridge … (2007)

In the last few years, phenotypically carbapenem resistant Acinetobacter strains have been identified throughout the world, including in many of the hospitals and intensive care units (ICUs) of Australia. Genotyping of Australian ICU outbreak-associated isolates by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis of whole genomic DNA indicated that different strains were cocirculating within one hospital. The carbapenem-resistant phenotype of these and other Australian isolates was found to be due to carbapenem-hydrolyzing activity associated with the presence of the blaOXA-23 gene. In all resistant strains examined, the blaOXA-23 gene was adjacent to the insertion sequence ISAba1 in a structure that has been found in Acinetobacter baumannii strains of a similar phenotype from around the world; blaOXA-51-like genes were also found in all A. baumannii strains but were not consistently associated with ISAba1, which is believed to provide the promoter required for expression of linked antibiotic resistance genes. Most isolates were also found to contain additional antibiotic resistance genes within the cassette arrays of class 1 integrons. The same cassette arrays, in addition to the ISAba1-blaOXA-23 structure, were found within unrelated strains, but no common plasmid carrying these accessory genetic elements could be identified. It therefore appears that antibiotic resistance genes are readily exchanged between cocirculating strains in epidemics of phenotypically indistinguishable organisms. Epidemiological investigation of major outbreaks should include whole-genome typing as well as analysis of potentially transmissible resistance genes and their vehicles.

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probeCheck – a central resource for evaluating oligonucleotide probe coverage and specificity

Alexander Loy, Roland Arnold, Patrick Tischler … (2008)

The web server probeCheck, freely accessible at http://www.microbial-ecology.net/probecheck, provides a pivotal forum for rapid specificity and coverage evaluations of probes and primers against selected databases of phylogenetic and functional marker genes. Currently, 24 widely used sequence collections including the Ribosomal Database Project (RDP) II, Greengenes, SILVA and the Functional Gene Pipeline/Repository can be queried. For this purpose, probeCheck integrates a new online version of the popular ARB probe match tool with free energy (ΔG) calculations for each perfectly matched and mismatched probe-target hybrid, allowing assessment of the theoretical binding stabilities of oligo-target and non-target hybrids. For each output sequence, the accession number, the GenBank taxonomy and a link to the respective entry at GenBank, EMBL and, if applicable, the query database are displayed. Filtering options allow customizing results on the output page. In addition, probeCheck is linked with probe match tools of RDP II and Greengenes, NCBI blast, the Oligonucleotide Properties Calculator, the two-state folding tool of the DINAMelt server and the rRNA-targeted probe database probeBase. Taken together, these features provide a multifunctional platform with maximal flexibility for the user in the choice of databases and options for the evaluation of published and newly developed probes and primers.

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Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (publisher-id): 1886

Journal ID (MPID): 122234

Title: European Journal of Microbiology and Immunology

Abbreviated Title: EuJMI

Publisher: Akadémiai Kiadó, co-published with Springer Science+Business Media B.V., Formerly Kluwer Academic Publishers B.V.

ISSN (Print): 2062-509X

ISSN (Electronic): 2062-8633

Publication date (Print): 1 December 2011

Volume: 1

Issue: 4

Pages: 289-296

Affiliations

[ ¹ ] Department of Tropical Medicine, Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, Bundeswehr Hospital, Hamburg, Germany

[ ² ] Institute for Medical Microbiology, Virology and Hygiene, University of Rostock, Rostock, Germany

[ ³ ] Institute for Medical Microbiology, University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany

[ ⁴ ] Virology Division, United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease, Fort Detrick, MD, 21702, USA

[ ⁵ ] Department of Pathology/Microbiology Division, Landstuhl Regional Medical Center (US Army), Landstuhl, Germany

[ ⁶ ] Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, Hamburg, Germany

[ ⁷ ] Department of Tropical Medicine, Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, Bundeswehr Hospital Hamburg, Bernhard-Nocht St 74, D-20359, Hamburg, Germany