Pr. Hsueh et al., INCREASING INCIDENCE OF NOSOCOMIAL CHRYSEOBACTERIUM INDOLOGENES INFECTIONS IN TAIWAN, European journal of clinical microbiology & infectious diseases, 16(8), 1997, pp. 568-574
To understand the clinical features, antimicrobial therapy and epidemi
ology of Chryseobacterium indologenes infections, the medical records
of 36 patients with nosocomial Chryseobacterium indologenes infections
seen over a three-year period al National Taiwan University Hospital
were reviewed. The 36 isolates recovered from these patients were stud
ied by molecular typing and determination of antimicrobial susceptibil
ity patterns. Nine patients had underlying neoplastic diseases, seven
had diabetes mellitus, five had burn wounds, and four had uremia. The
clinical syndrome included ten patients with intraabdominal infections
, nine with wound sepsis, six with intravascular catheter-related bact
eremia, and four with ventilator-associated pneumonia. Thirteen patien
ts had monomicrobial bacteremia, and four had polymicrobial bacteremia
. Nineteen patients (53%) developed infections associated with various
indwelling devices, The deaths of five patients (14%) were directly a
ttributable to infection with Chryseobacterium indologenes, All isolat
es recovered showed a wide range of resistance to commonly used antimi
crobial agents. The random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) patterns o
f the isolates differed from each other indicating the absence of epid
emiological relatedness among these isolates. Nosocomial infection cau
sed by multiresistant Chryseobacterium indologenes appears to be an em
erging problem in Taiwan and should be studied further.