Acinetobacter baumannii SDF

Acinetobacter baumannii is a pathogenic species commonly isolated from the hospital environment and hospitalized patients. It is an aquatic organism, and is often cultured from liquid medical samples such as respiratory secretions, wounds, and urine. Acinetobacter also colonizes irrigating solutions and intravenous solutions. Although it has low virulence, it is capable of causing infection. Most isolates recovered from patients represent colonization rather than infection. When infections do occur, they usually occur in the blood, or in organs with a high fluid content, such as the lungs or urinary tract. Acinetobacter baumannii SDF is responsible for community-acquired infections, and is highly sensitive to antibiotics. This strain was isolated from the interior of body lice collected on homeless people living in France. Given that the louse interior is usually sterile, the presence of this strain can only be due to cryptic bacteremic episodes. Infections by this organism are becoming increasingly problematic due to the high number of resistance genes found in clinical isolates. Some strains are now resistant to all known antibiotics. Most of these genes appear to have been transferred horizontally from other organisms. Many of them cluster into a single genomic island in strain AYE as compared to strain SDF. (EBI Integr8)