Antimicrobial activity of essential oils against multidrug-resistant clinical isolates of the Burkholderia cepacia complex.

Members of the Burkholderia cepacia complex (Bcc) are an important cause of opportunistic or nosocomial infections that may be hard to treat due to a high incidence of multidrug resistance. We characterised a collection of 51 clinical isolates from this complex, assigning them to 18 sequence types using multi-locus sequence type analysis. Resistance to eight commonly used antibiotics was assessed using by using agar-dilution assays to calculate MICs and widespread and heterogeneous multidrug resistance was confirmed, with eight strains proving resistant to all antibiotics tested.