Abstract
ABSTRACTAntibiotic therapy and its consequences in bacterial and human aspects are widely investigated. Despite this, the emergence of new multidrug resistant bacteria is still a current problem. The scope of our work included the observation of changes among uropathogenic Escherichia coli strains after the treatment with a subinhibitory concentration of different antibiotics. The sensitive strains with or without virulence factors were incubated with amoxicillin, ciprofloxacin, gentamycin, or tobramycin. After each passage, the E. coli derivatives were compared to their wild types based on their susceptibility profiles, virulence genes, biofilm formations and the fingerprint profiles of PCR products amplified with using the (N)(6)(CGG)(4) primer. It turned out that antibiotics caused significant changes in the repertoire of bacterial virulence and biofilm formation, corresponding to acquired cross-resistance. The genomic changes among the studied bacteria were reflected in the changed profiles of the CGG-PCR products. In conclusion, the inappropriate application of antibiotics may cause a rapid rise of Multidrug Resistant (MDR) strains and give bacteria a chance to modulate their own pathogenicity. This phenomenon has been easily observed among uropathogenic E. coli strains and it is one of the main reasons for recurrent infections of the urinary tract.
Highlights
Extensive research provides increasingly strong evidence of the importance of uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) strains for medical and epidemiological problems
The bacterial exposure on the sub-minimal inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of antibiotics is an important factor for emergence of bacterial drug resistance, especially since it can happen during the antibiotic treatment of a bacterial infection or during preventive use of antibiotics in animal breeding [38,39]
Our study provides a broad description of the correlation between sublethal antibiotic treatment and cross-resistance acquisition, virulence factor gene loss, and the increase of biofilm formation among UPEC strains
Summary
Extensive research provides increasingly strong evidence of the importance of uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) strains for medical and epidemiological problems Their remarkable adaptive abilities are conductive to acute or chronic urinary tract infections (UTI) and cause serious therapeutic problems [1,2]. They owe this high capacity to genetic modulate, own pathogenicity and drug resistance [13,14,15] Several urovirulence factors, such as hemolysin (the hly gene), the cytotoxic necrotizing factor type 1 (the cnf-1 gene), the P-pili (the pap genes), S-family adhesions (the sfa gene), and the bacteriocin usp (the usp gene) are coded by the genes located on pathogenicity islands (PAIs) and through this they can be quickly transferred via the horizontal gene transfer [16,17,18,19,20].
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