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Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, December 2001, p. 3603-3606, Vol. 45, No. 12
Department of Urology, School of Medicine,
University of Occupational and Environmental Health, 1-1,
Iseigaoka, Yahatanishi-ku, Kitakyushu,1 and
Kyurin Co., 27-25, Morishita, Yahatanishi-ku,
Kitakyushu,2 Japan
Received 27 November 2000/Returned for modification 1 June
2001/Accepted 30 August 2001
We have previously reported that the Neisseria
gonorrhoeae isolates from clinical failure cases treated with
cefdinir and aztreonam, As a result of the absence of
strains of Neisseria gonorrhoeae resistant to the
expanded spectrum of cephems, the National Committee for Clinical
Laboratory Standards (NCCLS) (8) has not defined the
breakpoint MICs of expanded-spectrum cephems such as cefixime (CFM),
cefpodoxime (CPD), cefepime (FEP), etc. A previous study
reported the incidence of clinical failures in gonococcal urethritis
treated with cefdinir (CDR) or aztreonam (ATM) (1). For
the N. gonorrhoeae isolates from such clinical
failure cases, high-level MICs of CDR, ATM, and other The MIC distribution of cefozopran (CZO) for N. gonorrhoeae
isolates was divided into two groups. The MICs for the high-level resistance group (8 to 16 µg/ml) were more than 16 times greater than
the MICs for the susceptible and low-level resistance groups (<0.5
µg/ml). The MICs of CZO were correlated with those of CDR, CPD, cefpirome (CPI), FEP, ATM, cefuroxime, cefotiam, ceftizoxime (ZOX), CFM, and cefcapene (CPN). The MICs of CZO correlated poorly with
those of penicillin (PEN), cefmetazole, flomoxef, and cefodizime (CDZ)
despite the fact that all 17 CZO-resistant isolates for these four
agents belonged to the high-level MIC group. CFM, CDZ and ceftriaxone
(CRO) exhibited lower MICs but the resistant isolates belonged
to the group with reduced susceptibility to these three agents. These
new resistant strains were clearly divided into two groups by the MIC
distribution of CZO, with all of the CZO-resistant isolates exhibiting
either resistance or a reduced susceptibility to all
0066-4804/01/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/AAC.45.12.3603-3606.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Outbreak of Cefozopran (Penicillin, Oral Cephems,
and Aztreonam)-Resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae in
Japan
ABSTRACT
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-lactams exhibited high MICs. These
resistant isolates were clearly separated from the isolates exhibiting
a low level of resistance to -lactams as shown by the MIC
distribution of cefozopran. Restriction fragment length polymorphism
DNA typing revealed that the outbreak of cefozopran-resistant isolates
in Kitakyushu, Japan, occurred as a result of clonal spread.
TEXT
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-lactams were
observed. In order to investigate the prevalence of these resistant
isolates in Kitakyushu, Japan, we examined 54 N. gonorrhoeae
isolates from different cases occurring during 1999 for susceptibility
to a variety of antimicrobial agents. Forty of 54 strains were isolated from male patients with gonococcal urethritis, while the remaining isolates were from female patients with gonococcal cervicitis. Identification of N. gonorrhoeae and testing for production
of -lactamase were performed by ID-test-HN-20 Rapid (Nissui
Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan) using colonies cultured on
Thayer-Martin Agar Base, Modified (Nissui Pharmaceutical Co.).
The MICs of various antimicrobials were determined by the twofold
serial agar dilution method on BBL GC Agar Base (Becton Dickinson and
Co., Cockeysville, Md) with 1% BBL IsoVitalX enrichment (Becton
Dickinson Europe, Meylan, France) according to the guidelines of the
NCCLS (8). The antimicrobial agents used in this study
were purchased from or provided by the corresponding companies.
-lactams
tested. Clinical failures caused by these resistant isolates occurred
in three patients treated with CDR or ATM (Table 1). For these 17 isolates, high-level
MICs for penicillins, narrow- and expanded-spectrum
cephalosporins, cephamycins, the majority of broad-spectrum oral
cephalosporins, and aztreonam were observed, together with a reduced
susceptibility to most broad-spectrum parenteral cephalosporins. In the
measurement of MIC and the disk diffusion test, these resistant
isolates can be identified easily with CZO. CZO has been rarely used in
gonococcal infection, but we consider that it may well be profitable to
use CZO to define this resistant organism. We therefore called these
isolates CZO-resistant N. gonorrhoeae (CZRNG). These
strains did not produce -lactamase. CZRNG accounted for 32%
(17/54) of all isolates tested. The MICs of CDZ, CRO, and spectinomycin
(SPT) showed that the isolates were susceptible, while CFM, cefotaxime
(CTX), and ZOX retained good activity. To other -lactams, the
isolates were resistant or had a reduced susceptibility. All of the 17 CZRNG isolates were resistant to ciprofloxacin (CIP), with MICs of this
drug ranging between 0.125 and 64 µg/ml. Six of 17 isolates exhibited high resistance to ciprofloxacin (MICs > 2 µg/ml). All 17 isolates were resistant to tetracycline (MIC, 1 to 4 µg/ml). The MICs
of minocycline (MIN) for 15 of the 17 isolates were greater than 0.5 µg/ml. The MIC of erythromycin for one isolate was 0.125 µg/ml, while MICs for the other isolates had values of 4 to 16 µg/ml. Thus,
17 CZRNG isolates were multiresistant strains.
TABLE 1.
Clinical data of 17 cefozopran-resistant N. gonorrhoeae isolatesa
We therefore performed restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP)
analysis as described by Struelens et al. (10) using a
CHEFF Mapper pulsed-field gel electrophoresis system (Nippon Bio-Rad
Laboratories, Tokyo, Japan). Figure 1 and
Table 2 present the results of the
macrorestriction genomic DNA analysis by SpeI carried out
with 17 CZRNG strains. The 17 strains were isolated over a period of 8 months (May to December) from 17 cases at nine hospitals that were
scattered within a radius of 40 km. Although the 17 CZRNG strains were
isolated from multiple patients, RFLP analysis clearly divided the
isolates into only two groups. The RFLP patterns by SpeI of
the two groups differed by only one band. Molecular analysis software
(Molecular Analyst Fingerprinting Plus; Nippon Bio-Rad Laboratories)
indicated that the two groups were greater than 90% similar. The 17 CZRNG isolates underwent further RFLP typing by NheI
(5), which produced identical RFLP patterns for all of the
17 CZRNG isolates. These results indicate that the outbreak of CZRNG
isolates in Kitakyushu, Japan, occurred as a result of clonal spread.
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DNA ladders; A, SNG27; B, SNG28; C, SNG32; D, SNG33;
E, SNG46; F, SNG50; G, SNG52; H, SNG53; I, SNG54; J, SNG57; K, SNG65;
L, SNG70; M, SNG74; N, SNG75; O, SNG76; P, SNG79; Q, SNG81.
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The CZRNG strain was first isolated at a hospital in Kitakyushu, Japan, in May, 1999. After that, the frequency of patients suffering from CZRNG rapidly increased such that the ratio of CZRNG among N. gonorrhoeae isolates reached 45.5% (5/11) during the month of December 1999. To our surprise, the genomic RFLP analysis revealed that the outbreak of CZRNG isolates occurred due to clonal spread. In Japan, most patients suffering from N. gonorrhoeae are treated with oral antimicrobials such as penicillins, broad-spectrum cephems, fluoroquinolones, and tetracyclines. Therefore, the emergence of CZRNG isolates resistant to cephems, fluoroquinolones, and tetracyclines is of serious concern. In the cases of gonococcal infection caused by CZRNG, the administration of 1 g of CRO, 1 g of CDZ, or 2 g of SPT was effective (Table 1). In Japan, CRO has not been recognized for use in gonococcal infections, and we have therefore treated patients with gonococcal infections with CDZ or SPT. Although SPT-resistant isolates were not isolated in this study, there have been reports of SPT-resistant N. gonorrhoeae isolates in other areas (6, 7). We therefore recommend that CDZ be used as the first-line treatment for gonococcal infection.
It has been reported that the mechanisms of low-level resistance to
-lactams, including cephems, involved the mutation of the porin
encoded at the penB locus (4) and the decreased
affinity of -lactams to PBP-2 (2, 3, 9). Recently, we
have discovered that many codons of the PBP-2 gene (penA) of
the CZRNG isolates were different from those of the other susceptible
isolates (data not shown). This area is under further investigation
since this may be a potential resistance mechanism of CZRNG.
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FOOTNOTES |
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* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Urology, School of Medicine, University of Occupational and Environmental Health, 1-1 Iseigaoka, Yahatanishi-ku, Kitakyushu 807-8555, Japan. Phone: 81 93 691 7446. Fax: 81 93 603 8724. E-mail: muratani{at}med.uoeh-u.ac.jp.
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Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, December 2001, p. 3603-3606, Vol. 45, No. 12
0066-4804/01/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/AAC.45.12.3603-3606.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
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