| Title | Epidemiology and resistance features of Acinetobacter baumannii isolates from the ward environment and patients in the burn ICU of a Chinese hospital |
|---|---|
| Author | Yali Gong1,2, Xiaodong Shen3, Guangtao Huang2, Cheng Zhang2, Xiaoqiang Luo2, Supeng Yin2, Jing Wang1, Fuquan Hu1, Yizhi Peng2*, and Ming Li1* |
| Address | 1Department of Microbiology, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing 400038, P. R. China, 2Institute of Burn Research, Southwest Hospital, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing 400038, P. R. China, 3Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing 400038, P. R. China |
| Bibliography | Journal of Microbiology, 54(8),551-558, 2016, |
| DOI | 10.1007/s12275-016-6146-0 |
| Key Words | Acinetobacter baumannii, nosocomial infection, burn ICU, epidemiology, resistance |
| Abstract | Acinetobacter baumannii is an important opportunistic pathogen that causes severe nosocomial infections, especially in intensive care units (ICUs). Over the past decades, an everincreasing number of hospital outbreaks caused by A. baumannii have been reported worldwide. However, little attention has been directed toward the relationship between A. baumannii isolates from the ward environment and patients in the burn ICU. In this study, 88 A. baumannii isolates (26 from the ward environment and 62 from patients) were collected from the burn ICU of the Southwest Hospital in Chongqing, China, from July through December 2013. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing results showed that drug resistance was more severe in isolates from patients than from the ward environment, with all of the patient isolates being fully resistant to 10 out of 19 antimicrobials tested. Isolations from both the ward environment and patients possessed the β-lactamase genes blaOXA-51, blaOXA-23, blaAmpC, blaVIM, and blaPER. Using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and multi-locus sequence typing (MLST), these isolates could be clustered into 4 major PFGE types and 4 main sequence types (ST368, ST369, ST195, and ST191) among which, ST368 was the dominant genotype. Epidemiologic and molecular typing data also revealed that a small-scale outbreak of A. baumannii infection was underway in the burn ICU of our hospital during the sampling period. These results suggest that dissemination of β-lactamase genes in the burn ICU might be closely associated with the high-level resistance of A. baumannii, and the ICU environment places these patients at a high risk for nosocomial infection. Cross-contamination should be an important concern in clinical activities to reduce hospital acquired infections caused by A. baumannii. |