RT Journal Article SR Electronic(1) A1 Pérez-Cataluña, Alba A1 Tapiol, Josepa A1 Benavent, Clara A1 Sarvisé, Carolina A1 Gómez, Frederic A1 Martínez, Bruno A1 Terron-Puig, Margarida A1 Recio, Gemma A1 Vilanova, Angels A1 Pujol, Isabel A1 Ballester, Frederic A1 Rezusta, Antonio A1 Figueras, María JoseYR 2017 T1 Antimicrobial susceptibility, virulence potential and sequence types associated with Arcobacter strains recovered from human faeces JF Journal of Medical Microbiology, VO 66 IS 12 SP 1736 OP 1743 DO https://doi.org/10.1099/jmm.0.000638 PB Microbiology Society, SN 1473-5644, AB Purpose. The genus Arcobacter includes bacteria that are considered emergent pathogens because they can produce infections in humans and animals. The most common symptoms are bloody and non-bloody persistent diarrhea but cases with abdominal cramps without diarrhea or asymptomatic cases have also been described as well as cases with bacteremia. The objective was to characterize Arcobacter clinical strains isolated from the faeces of patients from three Spanish hospitals. Methodology. We have characterized 28 clinical strains (27 of A. butzleri and one of A. cryaerophilus) isolated from faeces, analysing their epidemiological relationship using the multilocus sequence typing (MLST) approach and screening them for their antibiotic susceptibility and for the presence of virulence genes. Results/Key findings. Typing results showed that only one of the 28 identified sequence types (i.e. ST 2) was already present in the MLST database. The other 27 STs constituted new records because they included new alleles for five of the seven genes or new combinations of known alleles of the seven genes. All strains were positive for the ciaB virulence gene and sensitive to tetracycline. However, 7.4 % of the A. butzleri and A. cryaerophilus strains showed resistance to ciprofloxacin. Conclusion. The fact that epidemiological unrelated strains show the same ST indicates that other techniques with higher resolution should be developed to effectively recognize the infection source. Resistance to ciprofloxacin, one of the antibiotics recommended for the treatment of Arcobacter intestinal infections, demonstrated in 10.7 % of the strains, indicates the importance of selecting the most appropriate effective treatment., UL https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/journal/jmm/10.1099/jmm.0.000638