In 2000, Enterococcus faecalis resistant to vancomycin was first reported at a tertiary hospital in Porto Alegre, southern Brazil. The resistance spread to other hospitals and surveillance programs were established by hospital infection committees to prevent the spread of vancomycin-resistant enterococci. In February 2002, an isolate initially identified at the genus level as Enterococcus was o...

Vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium strains (VRE) were isolated from human wastewater but not swine fecal waste from a semiclosed agri-food system in Texas. Forty-nine VRE isolates possessed vanA, and one possessed vanB. Twenty-one pulsed-field gel electrophoresis types were identified and segregated into three groups. There was evidence of clonal dissemination among geographically separa...

Vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecalis coisolated with vancomycin-resistant (VanA) Staphylococcus aureus was found to contain two plasmids, designated pAM830 (45 kb) and pAM831 (95 kb). pAM830, found to be conjugative and closely related to the Inc18 family of broad-host-range conjugative plasmids, encodes resistances to vancomycin (via a Tn1546-like element) and erythromycin; pAM831 encode...

A nasal carriage survey for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in an intensive care unit detected four strains of MRSA with reduced susceptibility to vancomycin. The vanA gene was found in two of these vancomycin-intermediate Staphylococcus aureus (VISA) strains. The absence of selective vancomycin pressure might have resulted in reduced expression of the resistant gene.

Enterococcus faecium strain 10/96A (VanD4) was the first vancomycin-resistant enterococcus (VRE) isolated in Brazil. Subsequent Brazilian VRE strains have all had the VanA phenotype. Multilocus sequence typing showed that strain 10/96A was isolated sporadically, has a unique sequence type (ST 281), and was not the progenitor of the VRE strains isolated from hospital outbreaks in Brazil.

Vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (VRSA) infections, which are always methicillin-resistant, are a rare but serious public health concern. We examined 2 cases in Michigan in 2007. Both patients had underlying illnesses. Isolates were vanA-positive. VRSA was neither transmitted to or from another known VRSA patient nor transmitted from patients to identified contacts.

Enterococci are part of the normal human flora. Enterococcus faecalis und Enterococcus faecium are the most common species isolated from human infections. Vancomycinresistant enterococci (VRE) have emerged as a major cause of nosocomial infection as early as 1986 [1]. 10 years later, >15% of nosocomial enterococcal infections in United States hospitals were due to VRE, and even higher in intens...

BACKGROUND Infections caused by antimicrobial-resistant bacteria are associated with increased mortality and health care costs. Enterococci have been recognized as a clinically important pathogen in hospitalized patients. Vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) infections cause significant morbidity and mortality among patients undergoing transplantation. OBJECTIVE To identify epidemiology of ...