Prevalence of , and -Carrying Plasmids in Isolated in a Brazilian Hospital.

carbapenemase (KPC) actively hydrolyzes carbapenems, antibiotics often used a last-line treatment for multidrug-resistant bacteria. KPC clinical relevance resides in its widespread dissemination. In this work, we report the genomic context of KPC coding genes , and in multidrug-resistant isolates from Brazil. Plasmids harboring and were identified. Fifteen additional carbapenem-resistant isolates were selected from the same tertiary hospital, collected over a period of 8 years. Their genomes were sequenced in order to evaluate the prevalence and dissemination of -harboring plasmids. We found that genes were mostly carried by one of two isoforms of transposon Tn (Tna or Tnb) that were predominantly located on plasmids highly similar to the previously described plasmid pKPC_FCF3SP (IncN). The identified pKPC_FCF3SP-like plasmids carried either or . Two isolates harbored pKpQIL-like (IncFII) plasmids, only recently identified in Brazil; one of them harbored in a Tna transposon. Underlining the risk of horizontal spread of KPC coding genes, this study reports the prevalence of and the recent spread of and , in association with different isoforms of Tn, together with high synteny of plasmid backbones among isolates studied here and in comparison with previous reports.