Two cases of septicaemia caused by Vibrio cholerae non-O1, non-O139 were reported in different regions of Poland during one

A total of 111 clinical and environmental O1, O139 and non-O1/O139 Vibrio cholerae strains isolated between 1978 and 2008 from different geographical areas were typed using a combination of methods: antibiotic susceptibility, biochemical test, serogroup, serotype, biotype, sequences containing variable numbers of tandem repeats (VNTRs) and virulence genes ctxA and tcpA amplification. As a result of the performed typing work, the strains were organized into four clusters: cluster A1 included clinical O1 Ogawa and O139 serogroup strains (ctxA(+) and tcpA(+)); cluster A2 included clinical non-O1/O139 strains (ctxA(-) and tcpA(-)), as well as environmental O1 Inaba and non-O1/O139 strains (ctxA(-) and tcpA(-)/tcpA(+)); cluster B1 contained two clinical O1 strains and environmental non-O1/O139 strains (ctxA(-) and tcpA(+)/tcpA(-)); cluster B2 contained clinical O1 Inaba and Ogawa strains (ctxA(+) and tcpA(+)). The results of this work illustrate the advantage of combining several typing methods to discriminate between clinical and environmental V. cholerae strains.

The aim of this study was to characterise the 34 Enterobacter cloacae strains isolated from different places in a hospital, either from patients who were infected or colonised and from the body surface of German cockroaches ( Blatella germanica) caught in hospitals. A number of factors were determined: the ability of E. cloacae strains to adhere to the HEp-2 cell line, their susceptibility to drugs, the activity of disinfectant agents to planktonic cells and effectiveness of those disinfectants to bacteria that are sessile on catheters as well as the Enterobacterial Repetitive Intergenic Consensus – Polymerase Chain Reaction (ERIC-PCR) profile of the strains. On the basis of a statistical analysis of all the phenotypic results we were able to distinguish a few clusters. The majority of them consisted of strains isolated from colonisation and infection of patients. Some clusters consisted of E. cloacae from all the test sites. Some strains showed similarities of their phenotypic properties as well as the ERIC-PCR profile. Epidemiological studies are continuing.