Escherichia coli bacteraemia: 2 years of prospective regional surveillance (2010–12)

Methods: Ten percent of all E. coli blood culture isolates were collected per month from 14 laboratories across the Yorkshire and Humber region. Individual laboratories submitted antibiotic susceptibility data and isolates were retested centrally using the VITEK2 system (bioMerieux, France). Isolates were also characterized using PCR to test for the presence of sequences encoding extended-spectrumb-lactamases (ESBLs) and genotyped using amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP). Selected isolates were further characterized using multilocus sequence typing.