Molecular Epidemiology: Application of Contemporary Techniques to the Typing of Microorganisms

Four patients on a surgical ward develop postoperative pneumonia due to Klebsiella pneumoniae. Is this an outbreak? A child recently treated for an Escherichia coli urinary tract infection returns with another. Is this a relapse due to the original organism or a new infection due to a different stra...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Clinical infectious diseases 1993-08, Vol.17 (2), p.153-162
Main Authors: Maslow, Joel N., Mulligan, Maury Ellis, Arbeit, Robert D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bacteria - classification
Bacteria - genetics
Bacterial Typing Techniques
Bacteriological methods and techniques used in bacteriology
Bacteriology
Biological and medical sciences
Communicable Diseases - epidemiology
Communicable Diseases - microbiology
DNA
DNA, Bacterial - analysis
Electrophoresis
Enzymes
Epidemiologic Methods
Epidemiology
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Gels
Genetic Techniques
Genetic variation
Genotype
Humans
Infections
Microbiology
Phenotype
Plasmids
Polymerase chain reaction
Ribotyping
State-of-the-Art Clinical Article
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Summary:Four patients on a surgical ward develop postoperative pneumonia due to Klebsiella pneumoniae. Is this an outbreak? A child recently treated for an Escherichia coli urinary tract infection returns with another. Is this a relapse due to the original organism or a new infection due to a different strain? Several cultures of blood from a man with a prosthetic heart valve yield only Staphylococcus epidermidis. The isolates have different antibiotic susceptibilities. Do they represent a single infecting strain or multiple contaminants? Each of these situations presents the medical practitioner with a problem that involves reliably differentiating multiple bacterial isolates or establishing that the isolates are identical. In recent years, investigations of epidemiology and pathogenesis have utilized a wide variety of techniques derived from immunology, biochemistry, and genetics; these studies are often referred to collectively as molecular epidemiology. This commentary gives an overview of the systems available for typing microorganisms and describes the strengths and weaknesses of each. We focus almost exclusively on the analysis of bacteria, as molecular techniques relating to fungi are just emerging and studies of viruses are generally restricted to specific research settings.
ISSN:1058-4838
1537-6591
DOI:10.1093/clinids/17.2.153