Journal of medical microbiology
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Comparative Study
Evaluation of three phenotypic identification systems for clinical isolates of Raoultella ornithinolytica.
Raoultella spp. have recently been separated from the genus Klebsiella based on their molecular characteristics. It was discovered that Raoultella ornithinolytica can be misidentified as Klebsiella oxytoca by commonly used phenotypic identification systems. Therefore, this study evaluated the ability of three phenotypic systems to identify R. ornithinolytica compared with the genotypic methods sequence-specific primer PCR (SSP-PCR), 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis using the MicroSeq 500 system16S rDNA bacterial identification system or comparison with GenBank sequences using blast. ⋯ MicroSeq 500 identified 24 isolates (88.9%) as R. ornithinolytica, whereas GenBank identification was heterogeneous. Of the 68 isolates identified as K. oxytoca by SSP-PCR, 66 isolates (97.1%) were identified as K. oxytoca by VITEK 2, MicroScan and API. MicroScan and API require additional biochemical tests to differentiate between ODC-negative R. ornithinolytica and K. oxytoca.