First nosocomial outbreak of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium expressing a VanD-like phenotype associated with a vanA genotype.

Although enterococci expressing acquired vancomycin resistance phenotype have been reported increasingly worldwide, they have been rarely reported in France. From August to December 2004 we faced an outbreak of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium (VRE) isolates in the nephrology department at Bicêtre Hospital (K.-Bicêtre, France).

Three-year survey of community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus producing Panton-Valentine leukocidin in a French university hospital.

A retrospective survey was conducted at Bicêtre Hospital, France from January 2001 to September 2003 to screen for S. aureus isolates with a typical phenotype previously involved in necrotizing pneumonia in France. They were resistant to oxacillin and kanamycin, of intermediate susceptibility to fusidic acid, and susceptible to tobramycin and fluoroquinolones.

[Epidemiology and antimicrobial resistance of Streptococcus pneumoniae strains isolated in Ile de France area during 2001].

Objective: The authors wanted to assess the level of Streptococcus pneumoniae antibiotic resistance in Ile de France.

Method: In 2001, 637 clinical strains of S. pneumoniae were prospectively collected from 32 microbiology laboratories.

In vivo acquisition of high-level resistance to imipenem in Escherichia coli.

Four clonally related Escherichia coli strains were isolated successively from bile duct of a girl suffering from sclerosing cholangitis. One of them, selected after an imipenem-containing regimen, was resistant to carbapenems and to broad-spectrum cephalosporins due to a plasmid-mediated cephalosporinase, CMY-2, and the lack of outer membrane proteins OmpF and OmpC.