Virulent and multidrug‐resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae from clinical samples in Balochistan

Abstract

Klebsiella pneumoniae is an important pathogen causing hospital-acquired infections in human beings. Samples from suspected patients of K pneumoniae associated with respiratory and urinary tract infections were collected at Bolan Medical Complex, Quetta, Balochistan. Clinical samples (n = 107) of urine and sputum were collected and processed for K pneumoniae isolation using selective culture media. Initially, 30 of 107 isolates resembling Klebsiella spp. were processed for biochemical profiling and molecular detection using gyrase A (gyrA) gene for conformation. The K pneumoniae isolates were analysed for the presence of drug resistance and virulence genes in their genomes. The 21 of 107 (19.6%) isolates were finally confirmed as K pneumoniae pathogens. An antibiogram study conducted against 17 different antibiotics showed that a majority of the isolates are multidrug resistant. All the isolates (100%) were resistant to amoxicillin, cefixime, amoxicillin-clavulanic acid, cefotaxime, and ceftriaxone followed by tetracycline (95.2%), ciprofloxacin and gentamicin (76.2%), sulphamethoxazol (66.7%), nalidixic acid (61.9%), norfloxacine (42.9%), piperacillin-tazobactam (23.8%), cefoperazone-sulbactam (19%), and cefotaxime-clavulanic acid (33.3%), whereas all the isolates showed sensitivity to amikacin, chloramphenicol, and imipenem. The presence of tetracycline, sulphamethoxazol-resistant genes, and extended-spectrum beta-lactamase was reconfirmed using different specific genes. The presence of virulence genes fimH1 and EntB responsible for adherence and enterobactin production was confirmed in the isolates. The high virulence and drug resistance potential of these Klebsiella isolates are of high public health concern. Multidrug resistance and virulence potential in K. pneumoniae are converting these nosocomial pathogens into superbugs and making its management harder.Sareeen Fatima and Faiza Liaqat contributed equally to the scientific work.

Antibiotic Resistance and Virulence Profiles of Klebsiella pneumoniae Strains Isolated From Different Clinical Sources

“…In contrast, yersiniabactin eludes binding to Lcn2, thereby avoiding the inflammatory response and promoting bacterial growth ( Lam et al., 2018 ). As expected, we found the entB gene in all the strains tested in agreement with another study ( Fatima et al., 2021 ). Besides, the higher prevalence of the siderophore-encoded ybtS and fyuA genes in the respiratory tract isolates compared to the urinary and blood strains confirmed that yersiniabactin is an important virulence factor for the pulmonary infection, as reported by previous studies ( Yan et al., 2016 ).…”

Virulence Characteristics and Antibiotic Resistance of Klebsiella pneumoniae Isolated from Clinical Sources

“…The present study was found a low prevalence of K. pneumoniae (27.8%) in total included clinical samples. The result was in consistent with 19.6% and 24% as estimated respectively, via [21] along with [22] and seems to be lower than that reported by [23] in clinical samples, who reported a frequency % of K. pneumoniae positivity is 73.3%.…”

Detection of mobile genetic elements in multidrug-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae isolated from different infection sites in Hamadan, west of Iran

“…In a 2021 study by Fatima et al[ 24 ], among SXT-resistant strains, the frequency of sulI (66.7%) gene was similar to our study (60.9%). Although all of the tetracycline-resistant strains had the tetB gene, in our study only there was 12.6% of tetB gene that could indicate other mechanisms in the development of tetracycline resistance in bacteria.…”