Figure 1

The numbers for each alert were assigned chronologically. For each alert the potential source/s (PS) and the cross-contamination alerts (CCA) are indicated. The MIRUtypes and RFLPtypes and the time (days) for the obtention of results, the result (TP:True positivity, FP: False positivity) after analyzing the MIRU-VNTR and RFLP fingerprints, and the differences between the time for solving the alerts by MIRU-VNTR and RFLP are shown. The asterisks in alert 4 indicate the differential bands between the RFLP patterns. The MIRU-VNTR alleles which are different for the isolates from an alert are highlighted in bold.