ISSN: 0973-7510

E-ISSN: 2581-690X

Open Access
S.S.M. Umamageswari1 , Neelusree Prabhakaran1, Kalyani Mohanram1 and A.S. Shameem Banu2

1Department of Microbiology, Saveetha Medical College Saveetha Medical College and Hospital, India.

2Department of Microbiology, Chettinad Medical College Saveetha Medical College and Hospital, Saveetha Nagar, Thandalam, Kancheepuram, Chennai – 602 105, India.
J Pure Appl Microbiol. 2016;10(4):3195-3200
https://doi.org/10.22207/JPAM.10.4.97 | © The Author(s). 2016
Received: 15/08/2016 | Accepted: 01/10/2016 | Published: 31/12/2016
Abstract

Enterococci are responsible for serious diseases such as urinary tract infections (cystitis, urethritis, pyelonephritis and prostatis), bacteremia, intra- abdominal, pelvic and soft tissue infections. Infection on burn surfaces were also commonly caused by Enterococcus. The ability of enterococci to cause such diseases is due to acquisition of certain virulence factors such as hemolysin, gelatinase, Biofilm formation and enterococcus surface protein (esp). This study has been conducted to investigate the occurrence of virulence factors between Enterococcus isolated from nosocomial infections and from stool samples (commensal isolates).Both clinical and stool specimens were collected and isolates were identified by microscopic, culture and standard biochemical tests. Virulence factors were examined by phenotypic tests and esp gene were detected by PCR method. There is no significant difference in the virulence factors like hemolysin and gelatinase production between clinical and commensal isolates. Biofilm production and presence of esp gene is very high among clinical isolates. Study of virulence factors associated with invasiveness and disease producing capacity of nosocomial pathogen like multidrug resistant Enterococcus will be very useful in treating them.

Keywords

Enterococcus, biofilm, esp gene, virulence

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© The Author(s) 2016. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which permits unrestricted use, sharing, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.