Abstract

CARRAMACHI, Isabel Nogueira; CARVALHO, Karyne Rangel; CRUZ, Jéssica Gonçalves Vieira da  and  ZAHNER, Viviane. A preliminary molecular epidemiologic study using analysis of variable number of tandem repeats of Acinetobacter baumannii OXA-23 producing strains isolated from hospitals in Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil. Rev Pan-Amaz Saude [online]. 2014, vol.5, n.2, pp.57-62. ISSN 2176-6215.

The Gram-negative multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacterium Acinetobacter baumannii constitutes a serious cause of nosocomial infections in Brazilian hospitals. A panel of 36 strains, belonging to five pre-determined pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) genotypes from four different hospitals in the City of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil, was submitted to simple agarose gel electrophoresis to determine the variation of nine variable number tandem repeats (VNTR) band profiles. Based on published data VNTR were classified in two categories, long (L) and short (S) repeats with different evolutionary implications. The results demonstrated the superior discrimination of VNTR over PFGE. The VNTR Abaum_3002 marker was the least discriminatory with only one allele, while VNTR10 and Abaum_2240 each presented four alleles. The use of a combination of the nine VNTR resulted in a refined genotyping tool that provides valuable epidemiological information.

Keywords : Acinetobacter baumannii; VNTR; Public Health; Epidemiology.

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