Journal article
Vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium sequence type 796 - rapid international dissemination of a new epidemic clone
AA Mahony, AH Buultjens, SA Ballard, EA Grabsch, S Xie, T Seemann, RL Stuart, D Kotsanas, A Cheng, H Heffernan, SA Roberts, GW Coombs, N Bak, JK Ferguson, GC Carter, BP Howden, TP Stinear, PDR Johnson
Antimicrobial Resistance and Infection Control | BMC | Published : 2018
Open access
Abstract
Background: Vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium (VRE) is a leading cause of hospital-acquired infections. New, presumably better-adapted strains of VRE appear unpredictably; it is uncertain how they spread despite improved infection control. We aimed to investigate the relatedness of a novel sequence type (ST) of vanB E. faecium - ST796 - very near its time of origin from hospitals in three Australian states and New Zealand. Methods: Following near-simultaneous outbreaks of ST796 in multiple institutions, we gathered then tested colonization and bloodstream infection isolates' antimicrobial resistance (AMR) phenotypes, and phylogenomic relationships using whole genome sequencing (WGS)...
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Awarded by National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Human Medical Research Council of Australia [grant number 1027874, and NHMRC Fellowships to TPS. and BPH.]; and the University of Melbourne [Australian Postgraduate Award to AAM.]. These funding bodies had no role in the design of the study, collection, analysis, and interpretation of data or in writing the manuscript.