Standardization and interlaboratory reproducibility assessment of pulsed-field gel electrophoresis-generated fingerprints of Acinetobacter baumannii

A standard procedure for pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) of macrorestriction fragments of Acinetobacter baumannii was set up and validated for its interlaboratory reproducibility and its potential for use in the construction of an Internet-based database for international monitoring of epidemic strains. The PFGE fingerprints of strains were generated at three different laboratories with ApaI as the restriction enzyme and by a rigorously standardized procedure. The results were analyzed at the respective laboratories and also centrally at a national reference institute. The standard procedure enabled us to generate PFGE fingerprints of epidemiologically related A. baumannii strains at different locations with sufficient interlaboratory reproducibility to set up an electronic database to monitor the geographic spread of epidemic strains.