High rates of CTX-M-15-producing Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae in wild boars and Barbary macaques in Algeria.

Abstract

The present study aimed to screen for the presence of extended-spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL)-producing Enterobacteriaceae in wild boars and Barbary macaques in Béjaïa and Jijel, Algeria. A total of 216 faecal samples collected between September 2014 and August 2015 were cultured on MacConkey agar supplemented with 1μg/mL ceftazidime. Isolates were identified by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionisation time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF/MS). Antimicrobial susceptibility testing was performed by the disk diffusion method, and ESBLs were characterised by PCR and sequencing. Clonal relatedness was studied by multilocus sequence typing (MLST). A total of 47 ESBL-producing isolates were recovered from faecal samples from 40 (44%) of 90 wild boars and 7 (6%) of 126 from Barbary macaques, including 30 Escherichia coli and 17 Klebsiella pneumoniae. Results of PCR and sequencing analysis showed that all of the isolates produced CTX-M-15, and 25 isolates co-produced TEM-1. MLST demonstrated the presence of eight sequence types (STs) among the E. coli isolates (ST617, ST131, ST648, ST405, ST1431, ST1421, ST69 and ST226), whereas only one clone (ST584) was identified for all isolates of K. pneumoniae recovered from wild boars (n=10) and Barbary macaques (n=7). This is the first report of CTX-M-15-producing E. coli and K. pneumoniae in wild animals from Algeria. The results show that African wildlife can act as a reservoir of the epidemic E. coli clone ST131 producing CTX-M-15, suggesting that this lineage can survive in different ecological niches and adapt to different hosts.