Genomic Determinants of Pathogenicity and Antimicrobial Resistance of Nosocomial Clinical Isolates of Hospitalized Patients (2019-2021) from a Sentinel Hospital in Hangzhou, China.

PURPOSE

( or AB) is one of the most opportunistic, nosocomial pathogens threatening public healthcare across countries. has become a primary growing concern due to its exceptional ability to acquire antimicrobial resistance (AMR) to multiple antimicrobial agents which is increasingly reported and more prevalent every year. Therefore, there is an urgent need to evaluate the AMR knowledge of for effective clinical treatment of nosocomial infections. This study aimed to investigate the clinical distribution AMR phenotypes and genotypes, and genomic characteristics of isolates recovered from hospitalized patients of different clinical departments of a sentinel hospital to improve clinical practices.

METHODS

A total of 123 clinical isolates were recovered from hospitalized patients of different clinical departments during 2019-2021 to analyze AMR patterns, and further subjected to whole-genome sequencing (WGS) investigations. Multi-locus sequence typing (MLST), as well as the presence of antimicrobial-resistant genes (ARGs), virulence factor genes (VFGs) and insertion sequences (ISs) were also investigated from WGS data.

RESULTS

The results highlighted that clinical isolates had shown a high AMR rate, particularly from the intensive care unit (ICU), towards routinely used antimicrobials, ie, β-lactams and fluoroquinolones. ST2 was the most prevalent ST in the clinical isolates, it was strongly associated to the resistance of cephalosporins and carbapenems, with and being the most frequent determinants; moreover, high carrier rate of VFGs was also observed such as all strains containing the , and genes.

CONCLUSION

clinical isolates are mostly ST2 with high rates of drug resistance and carrier of virulence factors. Therefore, it requires measurements to control its transmission and infection.