Abstract
Acinetobacter baumannii has recently been reported as clinically most significant pathogen in the infections of hospitalized patients. It has become resistant to almost all classes of antimicrobials, which poses a threat in treating the patients with limited available therapeutic options. Rapid and accurate identification of this bug is foremost priority in treating patients infected with Acinetobacter species. Currently available phenotypic methods are unable to accurately identify and differentiate the closely related species of Acinetobacter. Advantages of molecular methods over conventional phenotypic methods were observed for accurate identification and segregation of various species of genus Acinetobacter.
Previous studies on Acinetobacter suggested that the discriminatory power of molecular methods like OXA-51 PCR and gyrb multiplex PCR are higher than the phenotypic and conventional identification methods. MALDI-TOF MS has recently gained the attention of clinical fraternity towards quick, accurate and cheapest method for microbial identification, which also showed harmony with that of molecular methods. In the present study, we used multiple methods like phenotypic, biochemicals, MALDI-TOF MS, bla(OXA-5)(1)-like PCR and gyrB PCR methods to correctly identify A. baumannii and to analyze the precision of results obtained.