Menu
April 21, 2020  |  

Phenotypic and Genomic Analyses of Burkholderia stabilis Clinical Contamination, Switzerland.

Authors: Seth-Smith, Helena M B and Casanova, Carlo and Sommerstein, Rami and Meinel, Dominik M and Abdelbary, Mohamed M H and Blanc, Dominique S and Droz, Sara and Führer, Urs and Lienhard, Reto and Lang, Claudia and Dubuis, Olivier and Schlegel, Matthias and Widmer, Andreas and Keller, Peter M and Marschall, Jonas and Egli, Adrian

A recent hospital outbreak related to premoistened gloves used to wash patients exposed the difficulties of defining Burkholderia species in clinical settings. The outbreak strain displayed key B. stabilis phenotypes, including the inability to grow at 42°C; we used whole-genome sequencing to confirm the pathogen was B. stabilis. The outbreak strain genome comprises 3 chromosomes and a plasmid, sharing an average nucleotide identity of 98.4% with B. stabilis ATCC27515 BAA-67, but with 13% novel coding sequences. The genome lacks identifiable virulence factors and has no apparent increase in encoded antimicrobial drug resistance, few insertion sequences, and few pseudogenes, suggesting this outbreak was an opportunistic infection by an environmental strain not adapted to human pathogenicity. The diversity among outbreak isolates (22 from patients and 16 from washing gloves) is only 6 single-nucleotide polymorphisms, although the genome remains plastic, with large elements stochastically lost from outbreak isolates.

Journal: Emerging infectious diseases
DOI: 10.3201/eid2506.172119
Year: 2019

Read publication

Talk with an expert

If you have a question, need to check the status of an order, or are interested in purchasing an instrument, we're here to help.