Infections caused by Pseudomonas aeruginosa: Relatively frequent isolation of serogroup 12 from clinical specimens

Abstract

Serological typing of P. aeruginosa is the most simple and reliable procedure recommended for "in-house" investigations and for studies of suspected outbreaks of infection by this microorganism. It is also a useful procedure in order to know serotype prevalence in a definite geographical area and to obtain indications about the more appropriate composition of polyvalent anti-Pseudomonas vaccines. In the present report, we describe the relatively high frequency of isolation of serogroup 12 from patients in Palermo, Italy. Serogroup 12 is very rare in north-Europe and in the USA, and, as a consequence, it is not included in some vaccine preparations. In Palermo, strains belonging to this serogroup, resistant to a large number of antibiotics, were on the contrary isolated, during more than six years, in different hospitals and from three out-patients. In a Burns Unit, they were in particular responsible for extensive and life-threatening outbreaks.

Multiresistant serotype O 12Pseudomonas aeruginosa: evidence for a common strain in Europe

“…Furthermore, reports had appeared describing a high incidence of 0 12 strains in Rome and Palermo, Italy (4) and Jolimont, Belgium (5) with frequencies ranging from 11-7 to 42 % respectively of all P. aeruginosa isolated. This was in direct contrast to the very low frequencies of 0 12 strains in the UK and the failure to find any members of this serotype among 122 carbenicillin resistant strains selected from 24 British hospitals (24).…”

“…Nevertheless, antibiotic resistant strains are occasionally associated with large outbreaks of infection in hospitals and in recent years a number of reports have appeared documenting outbreaks of multiresistant serotype 0 12 P. aeruginosa in Greece (2) Italy (3,4) and Belgium (5,6). Serotype 0 12 was described originally by Habs (7) and is included in the 19 -2 566 T. L. PITT AND OTHERS International Antigenic Typing Scheme (IATS) (8), which forms the basis of the most widely used serotyping scheme for P. aeruginosa.…”

Fosfomycin for the treatment of infections caused by multidrug-resistant non-fermenting Gram-negative bacilli: a systematic review of microbiological, animal and clinical studies

“…Regarding the interpretative MIC breakpoints of susceptibility to fosfomycin used, eight studies used a susceptibility breakpoint of ≤64 mg/L [8,11,12,14,16,17,21,27], four studies used a breakpoint of ≤32 mg/L [23,24,28,29], one study used a breakpoint of ≤16 mg/L [18], whereas specific data were not reported in 10 studies [9,10,13,15,19,20,22,25,26,30]. The majority of the latter (six of ten) were performed in France [9,10,15,20,25,26].…”

“…Fifteen of the twenty-three studies reported on the site of isolation of the isolates examined [9,10,12,13,15,[17][18][19][20][21]23,25,26,29,30]. Ten studies evaluated susceptibility to fosfomycin according to the disk diffusion method [9,15,16,21,[24][25][26][28][29][30] and three studies each according to the agar dilution method [8,12,20], the broth microdilution method [17,18,27] and Etest [13,14,22], whilst three studies did not state the method of determination of fosfomycin susceptibility [10,19,23]. In one study more than one test method was used to determine susceptibility to fosfomycin [11]; in this study, the Etest method was selected to evaluate fosfomycin susceptibility, as the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) does not recommend the relevant broth dilution methods [39].…”

“…Eleven studies included non-fermenting Gram-negative isolates originating from France [9,10,12,15,20,[23][24][25][26]28,29], three studies included isolates originating from Japan [11,17,18], two from Italy [19,30] and one each from Thailand [16], Taiwan [14], Greece [8], Spain [27], the UK [22], Germany [21] and Bulgaria [13]. Fifteen of the twenty-three studies reported on the site of isolation of the isolates examined [9,10,12,13,15,[17][18][19][20][21]23,25,26,29,30].…”