COMPARATIVE CHARACTERIZATION OF ACINETOBACTER STRAINS ISOLATED FROM DIFFERENT FOODS AND CLINICAL SOURCES

Eighty-three Acinetobacter strains from clinical sources, and 170 from various foods (including fresh and spoiled meat and fish, vegetables, raw milk and cheese) were identified according to recently improved t axonomy, using a computer-assisted probabilistic method based on pheno typing tests. Apart from some atypical characters, most of the strains (94%) were identified to belong to the genospecies or groups of genos pecies described in the literature. Among our strains from hospitals, the A. calcoaceticus- A. baumannii complex predominated, whereas the s trains isolated from food were predominated by genospecies 7 (A. johns onii), followed by genospecies 8/9 (A. lwoffii). The isolates from cli nical environments showed a major incidence of antibiotic resistance, haemolytic strains and strains producing polysaccharidic material.