Occurrence of high-risk clones of Klebsiella pneumoniae ST11, ST340 and ST855 carrying the blaKPC-2, blaNDM-1, blaNDM-5 and blaNDM-7 genes from colonized and infected patients in Brazil.

Abstract

Determine which ST clones were carrying the blaKPC, blaNDM, blaVIM, blaIMP and blaGES genes and their variants in clinical isolates of multidrug resistant K. pneumoniae. Ten K. pneumoniae isolates were obtained from the colonized and infected patients in a public hospital in the city of Recife-PE, in northeastern Brazil, and were further analyzed. The detection of carbapenem resistance genes and the 7 housekeeping genes (for MLST detection) were done with PCR and sequencing. The blaKPC and blaNDM genes were detected concomitantly in all isolates, with variants being detected blaNDM-1, blaNDM-5, blaNDM-7 and blaKPC-2. The blaKPC-2 and blaNDM-1 combination being the most frequent. Molecular typing by MLST detected three types of high-risk ST clones, associated with the clonal complex 258, ST11/CC258 in eight isolates, and ST855/CC258 and ST340/CC258 in the other two isolates. These findings are worrying, as they have a negative impact on the scenario of antimicrobial resistance, and show the high genetic variability of K. pneumoniae and its ability to mutate resistance genes and risk of dissemination via different ST clones.