Molecular study of nosocomial nocardiosis outbreak involving heart transplant recipients

Abstract

Randomly amplified polymorphic DNA analysis and rRNA gene restriction patterns (ribotyping) were compared as methods of investigating a nosocomial outbreak of nocardiosis involving three heart transplant recipients. No clear distinctions between three clinically related isolates and four unrelated strains were obtained by ribotyping. On the contrary, randomly amplified polymorphic DNA analysis with two selected primers, primers 2650 and DKU49, showed one pattern for the three related isolates and four patterns for the unrelated strains.

Molecular study of persistence of Nocardia asteroides and Nocardia otitidiscaviarum strains in patients with long-term nocardiosis

“…RAPD with the DKU49 primer provided reproducible differences among Nocardia species and among N. asteroides and N. otitidiscaviarum isolates. This result confirms the findings of Exmelin et al (9). Although it has been suggested that the discriminatory power of RAPD could be increased by using more than one primer (15), our study confirmed that good results can be obtained with a single selected primer.…”

“…Moreover, plasmid acquisition or loss cannot be excluded. Although ribosomal DNA gene profiling (ribotyping) is of value in typing numerous bacterial pathogens (3), this technique did not allow the differentiation of reference strains from strains isolated during a limited outbreak (9). Moreover, ribotyping is time-consuming and is not well suited to routine use.…”

Investigation of a pseudo-outbreak of Nocardia asteroides infection by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis and randomly amplified polymorphic DNA PCR

“…Disseminated infection, especially with central nervous system involvement, and other localized extrapulmonary infections may also occur (2,5). Outbreaks of infection due to Nocardia species have been documented (4,12), but there has been only one previous report of a pseudoepidemic due to N. asteroides (7). We report here a N. asteroides pseudo-outbreak related to specimen processing with the BACTEC 460 TB system (Becton Dickinson Diagnostic Instrument Systems, Sparks, Md.).…”

Can We Kill Two Birds with This Stone? Anti-Pneumocystis Prophylaxis to Prevent Nocardia Infection in Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant Recipients

“…First, most cases of nocardiosis occurred in 2015 (n = 6). Although the vast majority of Nocardia infections are sporadic, several reports suggested the possibility of Nocardia outbreaks affecting transplant units [2][3][4]. The fact that all the cases of nocardiosis described by Molina et al [1] were pulmonary may suggest an airborne outbreak of Nocardia.…”