Evaluation of a rapid immunochromatographic test for detection of KPC in clinical isolates of Enterobacteriaceae and Pseudomonas species

Abstract

The KPC K-SeT immunochromatographic test (Coris BioConcept®, Gembloux, Belgium) has been widely used for detection of KPC in Enterobacteriaceae with reported sensitivities and specificities of 100%. However, to our knowledge, there are no reports of its use in KPC-positive Pseudomonas species. We evaluated the KPC K-SeT test in 36 clinical isolates of Enterobacteriaceae (21 KPC-positive and 15 KPC-negative) and 20 Pseudomonas species (5 KPC-positive and 15 KPC-negative) using conventional PCR for carbapenemase genes as the reference method. The KPC K-SeT test detected 25 out of 26 KPC-positive isolates (96.1%). The undetected isolate was 1 P. aeruginosa bearing the mutation D179Y in the omega loop region of KPC-2 carbapenemase. This mutation was already reported in Enterobacteriaceae as conferring resistance to ceftazidime-avibactam. To our knowledge, this is the first report of evaluation of KPC K-SeT test in KPC-positive P. aeruginosa isolates.