Molecular epidemiology of Acinetobacter baumannii: An approach to current typing methods and outbreak investigations

Acinetobacter baumannii has been recently considered an important nosocomial pathogen responsible of worldwide, intensively documented, outbreaks. This increases the need for effective epidemiological typing methods. Throughout the years, many typing methods for A. baumannii epidemiological studies have been proposed from phenotypic to molecular methods. Currently, the use of phenotypic typing methods have declined considerably and been progressively replaced by molecular methods. Many molecular typing methods have been described and of those, Pulsed Field Gel Electrophoresis remains the gold standard. Data about epidemic clones of Acinetobacter baumannii that caused outbreaks in developing counteries are lacking and need to be documented by continous research projects. This is particulary important because global spread of multidrug and pandrug resistant strains is a common problem facing us.