characterization of vancomycin resistant enterococcus faecium

background: to determine the species distribution, updated drug susceptibility patterns and genes conferring resistance in clini­cal vancomycin resistant enterococcal (vre) isolates. methods: clinical enterococcal isolates collected during 7 months, from september 2005 to april 2006 from hos­pitalized pa­tients and outpatients were studied. twenty five vre were isolated from 450 enterococci samples (5.6%). vre isolates were subjected to antibiotic susceptibility tests. genotype of these isolates was determined by pcr. results: all of the isolates were e. faecium and carried the vana gene.  antibiotic susceptibility tests showed that the iso­lates were resistant to ampicillin 25(100%), ciprofloxacin 25(100%), gentamicin 24(96%), erythromycin 25(100%), tetracy­clin 10(40%) and chloramphenicol 2(8%). conclusion: vre strains were resistant to three antibiotics and were susceptible to new antibiotics linezolid and dalfopris­tin-quinupristin. switching to treatment with these antibiotics would relieve the problem for a short time.