Skin carriage of acinetobacters in Hong Kong

We studied the carriage of Acinetobacter spp. at five superficial sites in 79 patients from two hospitals, in 133 healthy controls from the community (medical students and new nurses), and in 198 student nurses in different c lasses, A total of 431 isolates fi om 364 positive sites of 201 subjects an d 124 blood culture isolates (1997 to 1998) were genospeciated by amplified ribosomal DNA restriction analysis, Genospecies 3 was the most common spec ies. The carriage rate of student nurses (42 of 131) was significantly lowe r than that of new nurses from the community (25 of 38) (chi-square test, P = 0.0004; odds ratio [ORI, 4.08; 95% confidence limits, 1.78 to 9.41) but not significantly different (P = 0.1) from that of patients in the same hos pital (20 of 42). Genospecies from blood cultures and subjects (acute patie nts and student nurses) from Prince of Wales Hospital were similar to one a nother but different from subjects from the community or from another hospi tal (chi-square test, P < 0.0001). Half of the subjects who were positive a t at least two sites had different genospecies, Of the 28 sites examined, 6 8% showed strain variation among isolates of the same genospecies by random amplified polymorphic DNA analysis. Half of the 106 subjects who had sampl es taken again within 6 weeks or 6 months later were positive only once. In the 17 subjects who were positive on at least two occasions, each occasion yielded different genospecies in 13 subjects. Our results indicate that sk in carriage in the majority of healthy subjects is characterized by low den sity, variation in genospecies and strains, short-term duration, and the ty picality of a given locality.