Objective: Sphingomonas paucimobilis is a non-fermentative, gram negative bacillus which may cause epidemics especially at intensive care units (ICU), where infections are most commonly seen. We aimed to evaluate clonal relation of S. paucimobilis isolates, obtained from both patients and Internal Medicine ICU environment.
Material and Method: Three S. paucimobilis isolates were detected, within one month from patients residing in Internal Medicine ICU. In order to identify the infection source, microbiological examination of environmental samples was performed. Identification of S. paucimobilis was done with conventional methods and VITEK2 (bioMerieux, France) automated identification system. Antibiotic susceptibilities of clinical and environmental S. paucimobilis isolates were evaluated with VITEK2 system and clonal relationship
of the isolates were evaluated with “Arbitrarily Primed” Polymerase Chain Reaction (AP-PCR).
Results: S. paucimobilis samples were isolated from three patients and five different oxygen humidifiers during environmental sampling. Phenotypic antimicrobial susceptibility patterns of total eight isolates from both groups were found identical. However, five isolates from oxygen humidifiers showed similar band patterns on AP-PCR while two patient isolates were different from environmental samples and one of them were different from all others.
Conclusion: Absence of genotypic relation between environmental and patient isolates showed us that the oxygen humidifiers were not the source of the S. paucimobilis contamination. Revealing the clonal relations via molecular epidemiologic methods, helps to detection of isolates related with outbreaks and increases the effectiveness of the infection control programs of hospitals. AP-PCR is among the primarily used molecular genotyping methods during short-term outbreaks.

Sphingomonas paucimobilis Intensive care unit Nosocomial infection Arbitrarily primed polymerase chain reaction