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Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, May 2002, p. 1564-1567, Vol. 46, No. 5
0066-4804/02/$04.00+0     DOI: 10.1128/AAC.46.5.1564-1567.2002
Copyright © 2002, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Association of Metronidazole Resistance and Natural Competence in Helicobacter pylori

Graduate Institute of Microbiology, College of Medicine, National Taiwan University,¹ Department of Internal Medicine, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan²

Received 8 August 2001/ Returned for modification 27 December 2001/ Accepted 2 February 2002

To study whether the capability of horizontal DNA transfer is associated with metronidazole resistance in Helicobacter pylori, a total of 81 clinical isolates were tested for MICs of metronidazole (MTZ). The MIC assays were performed by using the E-test and reconfirmed by the agar dilution method. Natural competence assays were performed by transferring a chloramphenicol acetyltransferase cassette and a 23S rRNA gene from a clarithromycin-resistant strain (with an A-to-G mutation at nucleotide 2143) by using natural transformation. Of the 81 isolates, 65 (80.2%) were naturally competent while 16 were not. Among the 65 naturally competent strains, 39 (60%) were highly resistant to MTZ (MICs, >32 µg/ml) while only 2 of 16 (12.5%) noncompetent strains were highly MTZ resistant (P, <0.001). Therefore, there is an association between natural competence and MTZ resistance.

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