A one year single-center experience on Stenotrophomonas maltophilia strains in Alexandria, Egypt

*Corresponding Author: Marwa Ahmed Meheissen Address: Medical Microbiology & Immunology Department, Faculty of Medicine, Alexandria University, Egypt. Phone #: +2 03 4862506, +2 01005667342 ORCID #: 0000-0002-7122-4760 marwa.meheissen@alexmed.edu.eg Background & objectives: Stenotrophomonas maltophilia (S. maltophilia) emerged as an important opportunistic nosocomial multidrug resistant pathogen. This study aimed to investigate S. maltophilia strains to determine their virulence factors, antimicrobial resistance pattern, detect integrons and reveal their genotypic relatedness. Methodology: S. maltophilia clinical isolates were subjected to antimicrobial susceptibility testing using the VITEK-2 compact system (BioMérieux). Biofilm production, hemolytic, protease and lipase activity were tested. Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) for integrase 1 and 2 genes and Enterobacterial Repetitive Intergenic Consensus (ERIC) PCR were done. Results: S. maltophilia constituted 0.8% of gramnegative non-fermenters. All strains were biofilm producers. All strains were susceptible to trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole. Class 1 integron was detected in five (35.7%) strains. ERIC PCR showed high genetic diversity between the strains. Conclusions: Although multiple virulence factors were detected, strains were still susceptible to the recommended antimicrobials. ERIC PCR was found to be valuable in detecting genetic diversity among S. maltophilia strains being easy, rapid, cheap and available technique.