Rapid Identification of Vancomycin Resistant Enterococcus Faecalis Clinical Isolates using a Sugar Fermentation Method.

INTRODUCTION: Vancomycin Resistant Enterococci (VRE) can be found all over the world. Thus, rapid detection of the isolates could be of high importance in the treatment or prevention of the associated disease.

AIM: To measure the turanose fermentation in Enterococcus faecalis clinical isolates for rapid differentiation of VRE and Vancomycin-Susceptible E. faecalis (VSE) isolates.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: Forty E. faecalis samples were isolated from 200 clinical samples in Tehran Medical Center, Iran, from October 2012 to December 2012. These isolates were detected according to the standard microbial and biochemical tests. Detection of VRE isolates was originally performed by disk diffusion using 1 μg vancomycin disk, followed by Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) amplification of the vanA gene. Finally, the turanose consumption in 1%, 0.7% and 0.5% dilutions was detected by a phenotypic method.

RESULTS: Among the 40 E. faecalis isolates, 20 vancomycin-susceptible and 20 vancomycin-resistant E. faecalis were isolated according to the disk diffusion and PCR of the vanA gene. There was a considerable difference between VRE and VSE isolates in 0.7% dilution of turanose. However, there was no significant difference between VRE and VSE in 1% and 0.5% dilutions of turanose.

CONCLUSION: Since detection of VRE isolates is of high importance, especially in nosocomial infections, phenotypic methods may be highly useful for this purpose. In conclusion, our data indicate that VRE isolated from clinical samples could be distinguished from VSE isolates by turanose fermentation at dilution 0.7%.