Investigation of nosocomial respiratory infection due to Pseudomonas cepacia by arbitrarily primed polymerase chain reaction.

We used DNA fingerprinting by the arbitrarily primed polymerase chain reaction (AP-PCR) technique for an epidemiologic investigation of Pseudomonas cepacia nosocomial isolates obtained from patients attending our hospital. This approach was compared with conventional phenotypic typing and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). The patterns of gel electrophoresis of the products of AP-PCR differed significantly according to differences in the concentration of Mg2+ and in pH. AP-PCR and PFGE was identical in their resolving power, as the two methods generated four different profiles and identified the same group of strains. The AP-PCR method constitutes an easy alternative to the well-established PFGE method.