Edinburgh Napier University

  Enterococci have long been known to cause community acquired infections, such as urinary tract infection and endocarditis. The lack of uniformly effective antimicrobial therapy, together with the potential for enterococci to disseminate resistance determinants, such as its vancomycin-resistance genes, to other more pathogenic organisms, makes it of paramount importance to limit the dissemination of these resistant strains. Enterococci are widely distributed in nature, in the gastro-intestinal tract of humans and other mammals and also in birds, reptiles, insects, plants, soil and water. Enterococci of animal origin may give atypical reactions in diagnostically important carbohydrate fermentation tests. The existence of these host-related traits (ecovars) can prove useful in the investigation of possible transfer of animal strains to humans. Although enterococci are of relatively low virulence, the dramatic rise in nosocomial infections, their remarkable ability to acquire antibiotic-resistance genes and the lack of therapeutic alternatives on the horizon, make these bacteria a formidable clinical problem for many years to come.