Vertical transmission of Citrobacter diversus documented by DNA fingerprinting.

OBJECTIVE

To confirm the vertical transmission of Citrobacter diversus from a mother to her infant and to evaluate the epidemiologic usefulness of a new automated procedure for analysis of polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-generated DNA fingerprints.

DESIGN

Repetitive element-based PCR (rep-PCR) analysis of C diversus isolates from the blood and amniotic fluid of a mother and the blood of her infant was performed. Unrelated C diversus isolates also were characterized and compared with the isolates from mother and infant. DNA fingerprints were generated by gel electrophoresis of PCR products derived from either unlabeled standard repetitive sequence-based oligonucleotide primers or fluorescent primers. The standard rep-PCR fingerprints were analyzed by visual inspection. The fluorescent primers were used in fluorophore-enhanced rep-PCR (FERP), and the FERP DNA fingerprints were analyzed by an Applied BioSystems (ABI) Model 373A laser scanning unit equipped with Genescan 672 software (Applied Biosystems, Inc, Foster City, CA).

SETTING AND PATIENTS

A mother and her newborn infant, both with invasive disease due to C diversus, in an urban tertiary-care hospital.

RESULTS

The DNA fingerprints of the maternal blood, amniotic fluid, and infant blood isolates of C diversus were identical by both visual inspection of ethidium bromide-stained agarose gels and computer-aided analysis of FERP patterns. These strains appeared to differ from all but one control isolate, which had been collected 7 years earlier in the same city in which the infant was born.

CONCLUSIONS

Vertical transmission of C diversus from mother to infant can occur in utero. Automated analysis of rep-PCR-generated DNA fingerprints derived using fluorescent primers is an objective means for comparing isolates of C diversus and in all likelihood would be useful for other species of bacteria that possess repetitive elements.