Characterization of Staphylococcus aureus small colony variant strains isolated from Italian patients attending a regional cystic fibrosis care centre.

Small colony variant (SCV) Staphylococcus aureus are a subpopulation of auxotroph, slow-growing strains causing persisting and relapsing infections in cystic fibrosis (CF) patients. Twenty-eight SCV and 29 normal S. aureus strains were isolated from 42 out of 222 Italian CF patients.

First report of chronic pulmonary infection by KPC-3-producing and colistin-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae sequence type 258 (ST258) in an adult patient with cystic fibrosis.

The spread of Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase (KPC)-producing K. pneumoniae continues to increase, and the possible development of KPC-producing K. pneumoniae infections in cystic fibrosis (CF) patients is a matter of concern.

Use of the gyrB gene to discriminate among species of the Burkholderia cepacia complex.

Bacteria of the Burkholderia cepacia complex (Bcc) are opportunistic pathogens that can cause serious infections in lungs of cystic fibrosis patients. The Bcc comprises at least nine species that have been discriminated by a polyphasic taxonomic approach. In this study, we focused on the gyrB gene, universally distributed among bacteria, as a new target gene to discriminate among the Bcc species.

Antimicrobial use and Pseudomonas aeruginosa susceptibility profile in a cystic fibrosis centre.

The susceptibility patterns of 1315 mucoid and non-mucoid Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains from 224 patients were determined along with antibiotic utilisation in a Cystic Fibrosis Centre from 1993 to 1997. Ceftazidime was the most active agent (86.0% sensitive isolates), followed by piperacillin-tazobactam (81.

Exopolysaccharides produced by Burkholderia cenocepacia recA lineages IIIA and IIIB.

Clinical and environmental strains of Burkholderia cenocepacia belonging to the recA lineages IIIA and IIIB were examined for exopolysaccharide (EPS) production. The exopolysaccharides structure was determined using mainly gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry and NMR spectroscopy. All the strains produced Cepacian, a highly branched polysaccharide constituted of a heptasaccharide repeating unit, composed of one rhamnose, one glucose, one glucuronic acid, one mannose and three galactose residues.

Epidemiology and clinical course of Burkholderia cepacia complex infections, particularly those caused by different Burkholderia cenocepacia strains, among patients attending an Italian Cystic Fibrosis Center.

In this study, the epidemiology of Burkholderia cepacia complex (Bcc) recovered from the sputum of 75 patients attending the Genoa Cystic Fibrosis (CF) Center at the Gaslini Children's Hospital (Genoa, Italy) was investigated, and the clinical course of the CF patients infected with the different species and genomovars of Bcc was evaluated. All isolates were analyzed for genomovar status by recA gene polymorphism and subsequently random amplified polymorphic DNA fingerprinting. Burkholderia cenocepacia is the predominant species recovered from the CF patients infected with Bcc at the Genoa CF Center.

Burkholderia cepacia complex bacteria from clinical and environmental sources in Italy: genomovar status and distribution of traits related to virulence and transmissibility.

Sixty-eight Burkholderia cepacia complex isolates recovered from the sputum of 53 cystic fibrosis patients and 75 isolates collected from the maize rhizosphere were compared to each other to assess their genomovar status as well as some traits related to virulence such as antibiotic susceptibility, proteolytic and hemolytic activities, and transmissibility, in which transmissibility is determined by detection of the esmR and cblA genes. Among the clinical isolates, B. cepacia genomovar III comprised the majority of isolates examined and only a very few isolates were assigned to B.