Abstract
BackgroundHospital environmental resources have a significant role in cross-transmission of opportunistic pathogens such as actinomycetes species to the patients. Actinomycetes have a remarkable capability to survive in adverse and harsh conditions of hospital environments; therefore, they are a threat to the health of patients. Due to this issue, we aimed to determine the frequency and diversity of actinomycetes species in hospital soil, water and dust by using a combination of conventional and molecular methods including the phenotypic and biochemical tests for preliminary identification and the PCR amplification of the specific region of the 16S rRNA, hsp65 gene and sequence analyses of 16S rRNA for the genus and species identification.ResultsA total of 50 (35.2%) actinomycetes isolates from 7 genera were isolated from 142 hospital environmental samples. The three most prevalent species were M. setense 10%, R. erythropolis and M. fortuitum 8% followed by N.cyriacigeorgica and M. gordonae 6%, M. chelonae, M. abscessus, M. lentiflavum, M. mucogenicum, N. asteroides, N. farcinica, R. equi and L. shinushuensis 4% and the single isolates of M. conceptionense, M. septicum, N. rhamnosophilia, N. bravicatena, M. flavescens, M. arupense, M. doricum, M. frederiksbergense, S. heliomycini, S. albus, S. albogriseolus, R. facians, D. maris, G. terae and A. globiformis.ConclusionsIn conclusion we showed that the hospital environment is a potential reservoir for a broad range of actinomycetes species, due to the remarkable survival capability of these microorganisms in adverse hospital environment, carrying a threat to the health of patients.
Highlights
Actinomycetes is a general term for the heterogeneous group of gram-positive bacteria with fungal morphology growing as anaerobic facultative or aerobic rods [1]
Since the final goal was to screen and isolate mycobacterial species, initially the collected water samples were treated with 0.005% cetylpyridinium chloride (CPC) for 15 min to reduce the number of not-desirable microbial contaminants such as fungi, protista and other bacteria
Some actinomycetes species based on their high lipid content and triple-layered cell wall, they have a remarkable stress tolerance, which leads to more resistant to killing in a harsh environmental condition such as normal disinfection, elevated temperature, and ultraviolet light compared with other pathogenic bacteria that may colonize in hospital environment [40]
Summary
Actinomycetes is a general term for the heterogeneous group of gram-positive bacteria with fungal morphology growing as anaerobic facultative or aerobic rods [1]. Several recent reports indicated that bacteria belonged to actinomyces group can produce infections in immune-competent population with no preexisting illness, trauma, or immunosuppressive therapy [8, 9]. Some of these infection due to actinomycetes group are as follows: N. cyriacigeorgica, N. beijingensis and N. asteroides caused brain and organ abscess, M. avium and M. smegmatis caused pulmonary infection, A. meyeri and R. equi caused disseminated infection [10,11,12,13]. We aimed to determine the frequency and diversity of actinomycetes species in hospital soil, water and dust by using a combination of conventional and molecular methods including the phenotypic and biochemical tests for preliminary identification and the PCR amplification of the specific region of the 16S rRNA, hsp gene and sequence analyses of 16S rRNA for the genus and species identification
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