Proteus mirabilis is one of the most important pathogens associated with complicated urinary tract infections (acute pyelonephritis, bladder infections, kidney stones) and bacteremia, affecting patients with anatomical abnormalities, immunodeficiency, and long-term urinary catheterization. For epidemiological purposes, various molecular typing methods, such as pulse-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) or ribotyping, have been developed for this pathogen. However, these methods are labor intensive and time-consuming. We evaluated the discriminatory power of several PCR-based fingerprinting methods (RAPD, ISSR, ERIC-PCR, BOX-PCR and rep-PCR) for P. mirabilis clinical isolates. Typing patterns and clustering analysis indicated that RAPD, BOX-PCR and ERIC-PCR... |