cThe extended-spectrum--lactamase (ESBL) determinant CTX-M-55 is increasingly prevalent in Escherichia coli but remains extremely rare in Salmonella. This study reports the isolation of a plasmid harboring the bla CTX-M-55 element in a clinical Salmonella enterica serotype Typhimurium strain resistant to multiple antibiotics. This plasmid is genetically identical to several known IncI2-type elements harbored by E. coli strains recovered from animals. This finding indicates that IncI2 plasmids harboring the bla CTX-M genes may undergo cross-species migration among potential bacterial pathogens, with E. coli as the major source of such elements.
Salmonellosis is a serious public health problem worldwide (1-3). Ceftriaxone and ciprofloxacin are the choice of treatment for invasive Salmonella infections (4). Resistance to ceftriaxone or other extended-spectrum -lactams (ESBL) is usually due to the CTX-M group ESBLs in Salmonella spp., with CTX-M-9, CTX-M-14, and CTX-M-15 the most commonly reported in China and several other regions of the world (5-7). Genes encoding CTX-Mtype ESBLs are usually located in transmissible plasmids, which tend to disseminate among members of the family of Enterobacteriaceae (8). Various studies previously reported the presence of IncI1 plasmids that carried the bla CTX-M-14 element and other bla CTX-M variants in Salmonella spp. (9-11). In addition, other plasmid types, such as IncF, FIIA, F1B, HI2, Y, and B/O, have also been reported to be associated with bla CTX-M-14 and other bla CTX-M elements in Salmonella enterica serotype Typhimurium (12).In addition to CTX-M-14 and CTX-M-15, CTX-M-55 was increasingly reported in various countries in recent years, particularly among Escherichia coli isolates of zoonotic origin (13-17). However, it has not been found in Salmonella isolates. This element is frequently associated with the transposase ISEcp1 and is increasingly found in the IncI2 plasmids (18). Recently, several IncI2 plasmids, which harbored the bla CTX-M-55 element, were sequenced (19,20). On the basis of the genetic similarity between elements recovered from different bacterial species and a major discrepancy in the prevalence rate of different bla CTX-M elements in E. coli and Salmonella isolates, we speculate that bla CTX-M -borne plasmids might originate from E. coli and possess the ability to disseminate to Salmonella and other bacterial species.In this study, we identified a bla CTX-M-55 -positive Salmonella Typhimurium strain named STH21 that was isolated from a stool specimen from a patient in 2008 in Henan Province, People's Republic of China. Antimicrobial susceptibility tests performed according to the CLSI guideline revealed that STH21 was resistant to various antimicrobial drugs, including ampicillin, ceftriaxone, cefotaxime, amikacin, ciprofloxacin, and azithromycin (Table 1) (21). A bla CTX-M-55 -bearing plasmid recovered from this strain and the corresponding cefotaxime resistance phenotype was transferred to E. coli J53 by conjugation (22). S1-pulsed-field gel ele...