Pathologie-biologie
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Pathologie-biologie · Sep 2003
[Phenotypic and genotypic characteristics of non fermenting atypical strains recovered from cystic fibrosis patients].
We used partial 16S rRNA gene (16S DNA) sequencing for the prospective identification of nonfermenting Gram-negative bacilli recovered from patients attending our cystic fibrosis center (hôpital Necker-Enfants malades), which gave problematic results with conventional phenotypic tests. During 1999, we recovered 1093 isolates of nonfermenting Gram-negative bacilli from 702 sputum sampled from 148 patients. Forty-six of these isolates (27 patients) were not identified satisfactorily in routine laboratory tests. ⋯ Control measures and/or treatment were clearly improved as a result of 16S DNA sequencing in three of these cases. This study confirms the weakness of phenotypic methods for identification of atypical nonfermenting Gram-negative bacilli recovered from cystic fibrosis patients. The genotypic methods, such as 16S DNA sequencing which allows identification of strains in routine practice, appears to have a small, but significant impact on the clinical management of CF patients.