Detection of blakpc and blandm genes in carbapenems resistant strains of klebsiella pneumoniae isolated from some Egyptian hospitals patients

Abstract EN

Background : specially in the last decades as the levels of antibiotic resistance are becom-ing increasingly a serious problem throughout the world.

Aim : The growing number and rapid increase in carbapenems resistance which are the last resort of treatment of K.

pneumoniae infections has urged for investigating some of these possible resistance mech-anisms.

Materials and Methods: A total of 202 K.

pneumoniae isolates were selected from 593 specimens collected from patients attended 4 hospitals during the period from October 2013 to August 2014.

Fifty three multi-drug resistant (MDR) K.

pneumoniae isolates which showed resistance to imipenem and/or meropenem were tested phenotypically and gy-notypically for the producibility of Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenmase (KPC) and New Delhi metallo β-lactamase (NDM) and the presence of blaKPC and blaNDM genes encoding for these enzymes respectively.

Results: The rate of production of both potential KPC and NDM was 35 / 53 (66.04 %), whereas only 8 of these 53 MDR K.

pneumoniae isolates (15.1 %) were positive for NDM but not KPC production.

The rates of detection of potential blaKPC and blaNDM genes among the 35 MDR K.

pneumoniae positive isolates for the production of both KPC and NDM were 10/35 (28.57 %) and 5/35 (14.28 %) respectively.

Conclusion: blaKPC and blaNDM were detected in some MDR isolates.

However, the presence of isolates devoid of both genes suggests that resistance against carbapenems could be due to mechanisms other than the production of KPC and NDM-β-lactamases.