Abstract

Purpose: To establish clonal relationship between strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolated from 24 patients with postoperative endophthalmitis following cataract surgery Methods: All the patients with postoperative endophthalmitis were operated at the same operation theatre in the same hospital in Tiruchirapalli, Tamil Nadu, India. All the cases occurred within a time period of one month. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus (ERIC) primers (ERIC-PCR) was used to establish clonal relationship between the different isolates. Results: ERIC-PCR disclosed 4 different patterns. Seventeen isolates showed an identical pattern, whereas 2 other strains were closely correlated with the former 17. Two other isolates, with identical ERIC-PCR pattern, were genetically similar, but to a lesser extent, to the first group. The remaining 3 isolates showed identical ERIC-PCR pattern, but they were less correlated with the other strains. Conclusion: The results of this study indicate that the outbreak of postoperative P. aeruginosa endophthalmitis presented here was caused predominantly by isolates with identical or very similar genetic patterns, thus suggesting a common source of infection in most cases. ERIC-PCR appears to be an inexpensive, fast, reproducible, and discriminatory DNA typing tool for effective epidemiological surveillance of outbreaks of P. aeruginosa eye infections.

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