Abstract
The interplay between food production animals, humans and the environment with respect to the transmission of drug-resistant pathogens is widely debated and poorly understood. Pandemic uropathogenic Escherichia coli ST131-H30Rx, with conserved fluoroquinolone and cephalosporin resistance, are not frequently identified in animals. However, the phylogenetic precursor lineage ST131-H22 in animals and associated meat products is being reported with increasing frequency. Here we characterized two highly related ST131-H22 strains, one from a healthy pig and the other from a human infection (in 2007 and 2009, respectively). We used both long and short genome sequencing and compared them to ST131-H22 genome sequences available in public repositories. Even within the context of H22 strains, the two strains in question were highly related, separated by only 20 core SNPs. Furthermore, they were closely related to a faecal strain isolated in 2010 from a geographically distinct, healthy human in New South Wales, Australia. The porcine and hospital strains carried highly similar HI2-ST3 multidrug resistant plasmids with differences in the hospital strain arising due to IS-mediated insertions and rearrangements. Near identical ColV plasmids were also present in both strains, further supporting their shared evolutionary history. This work highlights the importance of adopting a One Health approach to genomic surveillance to gain insights into pathogen evolution and spread.
Highlights
Multi-drug-resistant (MDR) extra-intestinal pathogenic Escherichia coli (ExPEC) that cause urinary tract infections (UTIs), pyelonephritis and urosepsis represent a significant healthcare burden worldwide [1]
ST131 H30Rx causes a significant proportion of hospital and community-acquired urine and bloodrelated infections and is resistant to several last-line clinical antibiotics such as fluoroquinolones and extended-spectrum beta-lactams [3] conferred by expression of CTX-M-type extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL)
This study provides a starting point for examining this hypothesis in Australia, a country where sound antimicrobial stewardship has been shown to limit carriage of antibiotics of human clinical significance in food animal production
Summary
Multi-drug-resistant (MDR) extra-intestinal pathogenic Escherichia coli (ExPEC) that cause urinary tract infections (UTIs), pyelonephritis and urosepsis represent a significant healthcare burden worldwide [1]. Whilst a diversity of E. coli clones representing various multi-locus sequence types may cause extra-intestinal infections [2], much recent study has focused on the globally disseminated ST131 H30Rx sublineage of ST131. ST131 H30Rx causes a significant proportion of hospital and community-acquired urine and bloodrelated infections and is resistant to several last-line clinical antibiotics such as fluoroquinolones and extended-spectrum beta-lactams [3] conferred by expression of CTX-M-type extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL). ST131 as a clonal group exhibits subpopulation clonal structure that correlates with carriage of different alleles of the fimbrial adhesin gene fimH. FimH facilitates adherence to uroepithelium, bladder cell invasion and establishment of intracellular bacterial communities [4].
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