In vitro activity of new antimicrobial agents against glycopeptide-resistant Enterococcus faecium clinical isolates from France between 2006 and 2008.

Objective: The aim of this study was to determine the in vitro activity of six new antimicrobial agents against glycopeptide-resistant enterococci (GRE) strains from France.

Methods: Sixty epidemiologically unrelated clinical isolates of Enterococcus faecium (vanA or vanB), received at the National Reference Centre for Enterococci (CNR-Enc) between 2006 and 2008, were studied. The MICs of the following antibiotics were determined by broth microdilution according to Antibiogram Committee of the French Society for Microbiology (CA-SFM) guidelines: quinupristin-dalfopristin (Q-D), linezolid (LZD), daptomycin (DPT), tigecycline (TGC), ceftobiprole (CFT), and telavancin (TLV).

Rapid detection of vancomycin-resistant enterococci from rectal swabs by the Cepheid Xpert vanA/vanB assay.

The detection of vancomycin-resistant enterococci using a novel commercial multiplex real-time polymerase chain reaction assay (Xpert vanA/vanB, Cepheid, Sunnyvale, CA) was evaluated on 804 rectal swab specimens. Compared to enriched culture, sensitivity and negative predictive value of this method were 100%. Many false-positive results were recovered (sensitivity, 85.