Emergence of epidemic multidrug-resistant Enterococcus faecium from animal and commensal strains.

ABSTRACT:

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Enterococcus faecium, natively a gut commensal organism, emerged as a leading cause of multidrug-resistant hospital-acquired infection in the 1980s. As the living record of its adaptation to changes in habitat, we sequenced the genomes of 51 strains, isolated from various ecological environments, to understand how E. faecium emerged as a leading hospital pathogen. Because of the scale and diversity of the sampled strains, we were able to resolve the lineage responsible for epidemic, multidrug-resistant human infection from other strains and to measure the evolutionary distances between groups. We found that the epidemic hospital-adapted lineage is rapidly evolving and emerged approximately 75 years ago, concomitant with the introduction of antibiotics, from a population

SUBMITTER: Lebreton F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3747589 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature