“…Following Escherichia coli, Proteus is the second leading cause of Gram-negative bacterial urinary tract infections (Bauernfeind et al 1987;Liu et al 1992;Mobley and Belas 1995). Under certain circumstances, Proteus species can also cause other infections, such as bacteremia, respiratory infection, wound and burn infection, enteritis, pneumonia, chronic tympanitis, meningitis, peritonitis, keratitis, mastoiditis, and septicemia (Memmel et al 2004;Tumialan et al 2006;Bloch et al 2011). Because of the increasing clinical relevance of Proteus (O'Hara et al 2000), the development of efficient detection methods is of great epidemiological importance.…”