We surveyed environmental surfaces in our clinical microbiology laboratory to determine the prevalence of vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) and multidrug-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (MDRE) during a routine working day. From a total of 193 surfaces, VRE were present on 20 (10%) and MDRE were present on 4 (2%) of the surfaces tested. In a subsequent survey after routine cleaning, all of the...

PROBIOTICS AND INTESTINAL COLONIZATION BY VANCOMYCIN 1 RESISTANT ENTEROCOCCI IN MICE AND HUMANS 2 3 Magali Vidal 1, 2 , Christiane Forestier 2 , Nicolas Charbonnel 2 , Sandrine Henard 3 , Christian 4 Rabaud 3 , Olivier Lesens 1,4 * 5 1. Service des maladies infectieuses et tropicales, CHU Clermont-Ferrand, France 6 2. Laboratoire de bactériologie, UFR Pharmacie, Université d’Auvergne-Clermont1,...

Rapid identification of vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) can assist in choosing the appropriate treatment and preventing VRE spread. The performance of chromID™ VRE agar was evaluated using 184 clinical isolates of Enterococcus spp. and reference strains. The test had a sensitivity of 95.52% but a low specificity of 30%.

Although the term "Enterococcus" appeared in bacteriological literature as early as 1899 (Thiercelin26) this bacterial group has yet to assume the position merited by its occurrence and by its distinctive characteristics. The fault lies primarily in the failure of workers to cover all phases in the study of their strains and in an inability to correlate the results of different studies, rather ...

Clinical enterococcal resistance to linezolid is defined by the presence of the G2576T mutation. We evaluated the incidence of genetically proven linezolid resistance among vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium strains and linezolid consumption for a possible association. A relationship was found (r(2) = 0.73, P = 0.03) and predicts increasing resistance with current trends of linezolid use.

The trend toward increasing energy efficiency and variable renewable energy (VRE) production has implications for combined heat and power (CHP) plants, which operate in both the price-driven power market and the district heating (DH) sector. Since CHP will be important in VRE integration, we develop a complementarity model to analyze CHP producers’ roles in integrated markets. We use a Nordic c...

In the context of the global action plan to reduce the dissemination of antibiotic resistances it is of utmost importance to understand the population structure of resistant endemic bacterial lineages and to elucidate how bacteria acquire certain resistance determinants. Vancomycin resistant enterococci represent one such example of a prominent nosocomial pathogen on which nation-wide populatio...

PURPOSE A pre-post analysis of an antimicrobial stewardship program (ASP) involving the use of data-mining software to prospectively identify cases for ASP intervention was conducted. METHODS The investigators evaluated clinical outcomes and cost metrics before and after implementation of the ASP, which entailed daily physician review of summary reports on all adult inpatients receiving antim...

Enterococci are associated with both community- and hospital-acquired infections. Even though they do not cause severe systemic inflammatory responses, such as septic shock, enterococci present a therapeutic challenge because of their resistance to a vast array of antimicrobial drugs, including cell-wall active agents, all commercially available aminoglycosides, penicillin and ampicillin, and v...

To assess the rate of fecal vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) colon ization in Austalia, we examined specimens from 1,085 healthy volunteers. VRE was cultured from 2(0.2%) of 1,085 specimens; both were vanB Enter ococcus faecium, identical by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, but with a pattern rare in Melbourne hospitals.