Survey of Pseudomonas aeruginosa genotypes in Belgian colonised Cystic Fibrosis patients

¹ Cystic Fibrosis Centre University Hospital Ghent
² Microbiology Department, University Hospital Ghent
³ Cystic Fibrosis Centre University Hospital Leuven
⁴ Cystic Fibrosis Centre HUDERF- Erasme Hospital (ULB) Brussels
⁵ Cystic Fibrosis Centre University Hospital of the Free University of Brussels (AZ-VUB)
⁶ Cystic Fibrosis Centre Hospital of the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL)
⁷ Cystic Fibrosis Centre University Hospital Liège
⁸ Cystic Fibrosis Centre Sint-Vincentius
⁹ University Hospital Antwerp

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: Sabine.Vandaele{at}ugent.be.

	Abstract

To examine whether patients shared genotypes and to compare the genotypes of the isolates from the same patients during two subsequent years, we set up a Belgian databank of P. aeruginosa genotypes of all colonised CF-patients.

Sputum samples from a total of 276 P. aeruginosa colonised patients were sent during 2003 and from a subgroup of 95 patients in 2004. Patients were asked for social contact between each other by questionnaire. All P. aeruginosa isolates exhibiting different colonial morphology on McConkey agar were first genotyped by arbitrarily primed PCR, whereafter single representatives of each RAPD-type were further genotyped by fAFLP-analysis.

For the 213 patients from whom P. aeruginosa could be cultured and 910 isolates, a total of 163 genotypes were found. 75% of patients harboured only one genotype. In most of the limited number of clusters, previous contacts could be suspected. The same P. aeruginosa genotype was recovered from 80% of the patients, studied during both years.

We concluded that most patients harbour only one P. aeruginosa genotype, despite different colonial morphotypes. There is only a limited number of clusters, and most patients seem to have the same genotype during both years.

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