Incidence of antibiotic resistance and sex pheromone response among enterococci isolated from clinical human samples and from municipal waste water.

The incidence of resistance to various antibiotics as well as the capacity to elicit aggregation response to sex pheromones have been investigated in strains of Enterococcus faecalis isolated from clinical and municipal waste waters (MWW). While clinical isolates showed a high incidence of antibiotic resistance (87%) and sex pheromone response (33%), these traits appeared with a much lower frequency in MWW isolates (12% and 4% respectively). The simultaneous incidence of both traits was of 52% and 0% for clinical and MWW isolates, respectively. The capacity to elicit a positive pheromone response as well as antibiotic resistance traits seemed to be strongly correlated with the presence of gelatinase activity among clinical isolates. Among MWW isolates, only sex pheromone response seemed to correlate with the presence of gelatinase activity.