Inverse Association between the Existence of CRISPR/Cas Systems with Antibiotic Resistance, Extended Spectrum β-Lactamase and Carbapenemase Production in Multidrug, Extensive Drug and Pandrug-Resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae .
Noor A JwairMushtak T S Al-OuqailiFarah I Al-MarzooqPublished in: Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) (2023)
Antimicrobial resistance, with the production of extended-spectrum β-lactamases (ESBL) and carbapenemases, is common in the opportunistic pathogen, Klebsiella pneumoniae . This organism has a genome that can contain clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPRs), which operate as a defense mechanism against external invaders such as plasmids and viruses. This study aims to determine the association of the CRISPR/Cas systems with antibiotic resistance in K. pneumoniae isolates from Iraqi patients. A total of 100 K. pneumoniae isolates were collected and characterized according to their susceptibility to different antimicrobial agents. The CRISPR/Cas systems were detected via PCR. The phenotypic detection of ESBLs and carbapenemases was performed. The production of ESBL was detected in 71% of the isolates. Carbapenem-resistance was detected in 15% of the isolates, while only 14% were susceptible to all antimicrobial agents. Furthermore, the bacteria were classified into multidrug (77%), extensively drug-resistant (11.0%) and pandrug-resistant (4.0%). There was an inverse association between the presence of the CRISPR/Cas systems and antibiotic resistance, as resistance was higher in the absence of the CRISPR/Cas system. Multidrug resistance in ESBL-producing and carbapenem-resistant K. pneumoniae occurred more frequently in strains negative for the CRISPR/Cas system. Thus, we conclude that genes for exogenous antibiotic resistance can be acquired in the absence of the CRISPR/Cas modules that can protect the bacteria against acquiring foreign DNA.
Keyphrases
- klebsiella pneumoniae
- crispr cas
- multidrug resistant
- drug resistant
- genome editing
- escherichia coli
- acinetobacter baumannii
- gram negative
- antimicrobial resistance
- end stage renal disease
- staphylococcus aureus
- genome wide
- chronic kidney disease
- newly diagnosed
- ejection fraction
- dna methylation
- cystic fibrosis
- peritoneal dialysis
- patient reported outcomes
- quantum dots
- candida albicans