Bacteria from the Burkholderia cepacia complex cause severe lung infections in people with cystic fibrosis (CF). The risk of epidemic spread of the infection led the CF centres to implement strict isolation precautions.
Furthermore, it was imperative to identify the microbial agent correctly and timely which was made possible thanks to the methods of molecular microbiology. No new Burkholderia cenocepacia infections, caused by the ST-32 strain which had been responsible for a large outbreak in 1990s, were diagnosed in the Czech Republic in the last ten years.