Flavobacterium breve (Lustig 1890) Bergey et al. 1923 was originally meagerly characterized in comparison with the wide range of characterization tests now available, and subsequent descriptions of this species have been few and incomplete. No type strain was designated for F. breve, and no neotype appears to have been proposed. Six strains from a collection of 1,700 gram-negative, nonfermen-tative clinical strains submitted to the National Collection of Type Cultures for computer-assisted identification during the last 10 years and one strain (ATCC 14234) maintained in a culture collection as F. breve conformed to the original and subsequent descriptions of F. breve. One of these seven strains, CL88/76 (= NCTC 11099), is herein proposed as the neotype strain of F. breve. These seven strains have been examined in a large number of biochemical tests and in their susceptibility to a range of antimicrobial agents in order to provide a revised description of the species by which it may be more easily recognized in clinical material. One of our clinical strains died before its susceptibility could be determined, but the remaining five, together with ATCC 14234, were resistant to carbenicillin and gentamicin, and the five clinical strains examined were also resistant to several other antimicrobial agents generally useful in the treatment of infections caused by gram-negative, nonfermentative bacteria. This suggests that infections due to this species could prove to be difficult to treat.
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