Emergence of Hybrid Resistance and Virulence Plasmids Harboring New Delhi Metallo-β-Lactamase in <i>Klebsiella pneumoniae</i> in Russia

• Main Authors: Polina Starkova (Author), Irina Lazareva (Author), Alisa Avdeeva (Author), Ofeliia Sulian (Author), Darya Likholetova (Author), Vladimir Ageevets (Author), Marina Lebedeva (Author), Vladimir Gostev (Author), Julia Sopova (Author), Sergey Sidorenko (Author)
• Format: Book
• Published: MDPI AG, 2021-06-01T00:00:00Z.
• Subjects: article
• Online Access: Connect to this object online.

Summary

The emergence of carbapenem-resistant hypervirulent <i>Klebsiella pneumoniae</i> (CR-hvKp) is a new threat to healthcare. In this study, we analyzed nine CR-hvKp isolates of different sequence-types (ST) recovered from patients with nosocomial infections in two hospitals in Saint Petersburg. Whole-genome sequencing showed that eight of them harbored large mosaic plasmids carrying resistance to carbapenems and hypervirulence simultaneously, and four different types of hybrid plasmids were identified. BLAST analysis showed a high identity with two hybrid plasmids originating in the UK and Czech Republic. We demonstrated that hybrid plasmids emerged due to the acquisition of resistance genes by virulent plasmids. Moreover, one of the hybrid plasmids carried a novel New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase (NDM) variant, differing from NDM-1 by one amino acid substitution (D130N), which did not provide significant evolutionary advantages compared to NDM-1. The discovery of structurally similar plasmids in geographically distant regions suggests that the actual distribution of hybrid plasmids carrying virulence and resistance genes is much wider than expected.

Item Description

10.3390/antibiotics10060691
2079-6382