Persistent bacteraemia caused by a single clone of Burkholderia cepacia with unusual phenotype.

We report a case of persistent bacteraemia caused by a single clone of Burkholderia cepacia with unusual characteristics. Six isolates of B. cepacia were recovered from a patient with acute myeloid leukaemia and chemotherapy-induced neutropenia within a 3-week period. All six isolates were initially incompletely identified as B. cepacia with the API 20NE system. The further use of cellular fatty acid analysis and PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism of the 16S rDNA confirmed the identification. These isolates also displayed an identical but unusual antibiotype. The identical cellular fatty acid profiles and genomic typing generated by random amplified polymorphic DNA identified these isolates as derivatives of a single strain. Copyright 2001 The British Infection Society.