Journal of Clinical Microbiology, June 1998;36(6):1494?500
Autores:

Chazalet, Valérie; Debeaupuis, Jean-Paul; Sarfati, Jacqueline; Latgé, Jean-Paul
Laboratoire des Aspergillus, Institut Pasteur, 75015 Paris

Lortholary, Jacques; Brücker, Gilles
Assistance Publique Hôpitaux de Paris, SEHP, 75001 Paris

Ribaud, Patricia; Gluckman, Eliane
Unité de Greffe de Moelle Osseuse, Hôpital St Louis, 75010 Paris

Shah, Pramod
ZIM-Infektiologie, Universitäts Klinikum, 60590 Frankfurt

Cornet, Muriel
Laboratoire de Microbiologie, Hôtel Dieu, 75004 Paris

Thien, Hoang Vu
Laboratoire de Microbiologie, Hôpital Trousseau, 75012 Paris

Abstract:

Fingerprinting of more than 700 clinical and environmental isolates of Aspergillus fumigatus from four differential hospital settings was undertaken with a dispersed repeated DNA sequence. The analysis of the environmental isolates showed that the airborne A. fumigatus population is extremely diverse, with 85% of the strains being represented as a single genotype isolated once. The remaining 15% of the strains were isolated several times and were able to persist for several months in the same hospital environment. No strains were found to be associated with a specific location inside the hospital, and identical strains were isolated from different buildings of the hospital and outdoors. Isolation of the same strain both from patients and from the environment of the same hospital is highly suggestive of a nosocomial infection. The characteristics of the environmental fungal population explains the two main results obtained from the typing of the clinical isolates: (i) the absence of a common strain responsible for an invasive aspergillosis outbreak results from the extreme diversity of the environmental population of A. fumigatus in contact with the patients, and (ii) patients hospitalized in different wards of the same hospital can be infected with the same strain since every patient might inhale the same spore population.
Chazalet, V. ... [et al.]