Epidemiology of Enterococcus faecalis urinary tract infection in a teaching hospital in London, United Kingdom.

Enterococcus faecalis is a frequent cause of urinary tract infection in hospitalized patients. Recent reports have suggested that the organism may frequently be acquired by cross-infection from other patients. In this study, we used total DNA restriction patterns to type 135 urine isolates of E. faecalis from four sets of patients. Isolates were placed into types (all bands identical) and into groups (most bands identical). Most isolates were discriminated by the typing method, and the results suggested that direct cross-infection occurred rarely if at all. However, two groups of clonally related isolates occurred frequently in the urine specimens and also in feces from hospital-associated patients and were often associated with antibiotic resistance. Isolates from these two groups were found less frequently in feces from people not associated with the hospital.