Colistin is one of the antibiotics of last resort for the treatment of carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae infection. This study showed that capsular type K64 (50%) and ST11 (53.9%) are the prevalent capsular and sequence types in the colistin-resistant strains in Taiwan. The interruption of transcripts (38.5%) and amino acid mutation (15.4%) in mgrB are the major mechanisms contributing to colistin resistance. In addition, novel single amino acid changes in MgrB (Stop48Tyr) and PhoQ (Leu26Pro) were observed to contribute to colistin resistance.
Klebsiella pneumoniae is an important human pathogen that causes several hospital-acquired and community-acquired diseases (1, 2). Although carbapenem is generally used to treat infections caused by extended-spectrum -lactamase (ESBL)-carrying K. pneumoniae (3), K. pneumoniae strains carrying carbapenemases or ESBL strains combined with the loss of porins can result in carbapenem-resistant K. pneumoniae (CRKP) (4-6). To eradicate CRKP, colistin and tigecycline are typically used to treat patients (7). Unfortunately, resistance to colistin and tigecycline has also been reported, with a 17% resistance rate of CRKP to colistin in Taiwan (8). A surveillance study also revealed that 43% of carbapenemase-producing K. pneumoniae isolates were resistant to colistin in Italy (9).Colistin, also called polymyxin E, is a cationic antimicrobial peptide that targets bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS), causing cell membrane leakage (10). Previous studies have demonstrated that the modification of lipid A with 4-amino-4-deoxy-L-arabinose (Ara4N) and phosphoethanolamine neutralizes the negative charge and reduces susceptibility to colistin in Enterobacteriaceae (11)(12)(13)(14)(15). Modification of Ara4N is achieved by the pmrHFIJKLM operon (13), and the two-component systems PhoPQ and PmrAB with connector PmrD are involved in the regulation of the pmrHFIJKLM operon (16,17). Moreover, MgrB is a negative regulator that influences PhoQ-PhoP phosphorylation (18)(19)(20). In this study, we analyzed capsular type and multilocus sequence type (MLST) distribution of colistin-resistant K. pneumoniae in Taiwan and attempted to define the mechanisms of resistance to colistin.Colistin-resistant K. pneumoniae strains were retrospectively collected from patients in the Taipei Veterans General Hospital (VGH) from February to August 2013. All 26 strains were clinical isolates and were isolated from different patients. Among the 26 clinical isolates, the Col14 and Col40 strains were CRKP, and only the Col14 strain harbored the carbapenemase KPC. Colistin was used to treat infections in 16 of the 26 patients prior to the isolation of strains, and the other patients did not receive colistin in the VGH (Table 1). However, we could not trace the colistin usage of these patients in other hospitals. Previous studies also showed that some colistin-resistant strains are isolated from healthy individuals (21). Resistance to colistin in strains that were not exposed to colistin might be due to spontaneous...