Ribotyping in Clinical Microbiology

For a considerable fraction of patients who acquire a bacterial infection during their stay in the hospital (i.e., a nosocomial infection), the infection was acquired through clonal dissemination of the bacteria from another patient or from a hospital source. Alternately, the source of the infection can be the endogenous flora of the patient (e.g., through the proliferation of resistant bacteria during treatment with an antimicrobial agent). Identifying the sources and routes of infection is therefore of utmost importance in order to control infection. Bacterial strain characterization, also called typing, has become an essential tool to define which bacterial strain is, and which one is not, part of an outbreak and to identify possible sources and routes of contamination. Additionally, typing methods can help finding reservoirs of epidemic organisms as a means to prevent future contaminations and infections of patients.