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Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, June 2005, p. 2568-2570, Vol. 49, No. 6
0066-4804/05/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/AAC.49.6.2568-2570.2005
Copyright © 2005, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Department of Bacteriology, National Institute of Infectious Diseases, Tokyo,1 Department of Bacteriology, Kotobiken Medical Laboratories, Tsukuba, Japan2
Received 4 August 2004/ Returned for modification 20 September 2004/ Accepted 9 February 2005
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There have been no reports of salmonellae resistant to ESCs in Japan so far. The frequency of nontyphoidal salmonellae resistant to ESCs seems to be low in other countries as well, though reports on such organisms are increasing (2, 4, 7).
In July 2003, Salmonella enterica serovar Enteritidis (isolate Hd63) was isolated from a stool culture of a 4-year-old outpatient with diarrhea and fever. Neither he nor members of his family reported traveling abroad prior to the infection. Hd63 was found to be resistant to cefotaxime and nalidixic acid by the disk diffusion method (9). In this work we investigated this isolate for antimicrobial resistance determinants.
Antimicrobial susceptibility of Hd63 was determined with an E test (AB Biodisk, Solna, Sweden) according to the manufacturer's recommendations. Of the ß-lactams tested, Hd63 was resistant to ampicillin, cephalothin, cefotaxime, cefuroxime, ceftriaxone, and cefoperazone and showed decreased susceptibility to aztreonam and ceftazidime but was susceptible to cefoxitin and cefotetan (Table 1). The resistance to cefotaxime was significantly reduced by clavulanic acid (Table 1), suggesting production of an extended-spectrum ß-lactamase. The MIC testing also confirmed resistance to nalidixic acid and showed decreased susceptibility to fluoroquinolones (Table 1).
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TABLE 1. Strains used in this study and their relevant phenotypes
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A plasmid profile analysis of Hd63, using Wizard plus SV Minipreps DNA purification systems (Promega Corporation, Madison, WI), revealed two plasmid bands (Fig. 1A, lane 1). Both plasmids (named pS12 and pS12-1) were recovered after the transformation of Escherichia coli DH10B (Invitrogen Corporation, Carlsbad, CA) with DNA prepared from Hd63 (Fig. 1A). The resulting transformants, named Hd90 and Hd91, showed patterns of ß-lactam resistance similar to the original strain Hd63 (Table 1), suggesting that most probably the same resistance genes were carried by the two plasmids. The ß-lactamase genes present in pS12 and pS12-1 were screened by PCR specific for genes coding for SHV, TEM, CTX-M, CTX-M-2, PER-1, and AmpC-type enzymes by using primers described in reference 10. Only a single primer pair for blaCTX-M, designed for detection of blaCTX-M-1-, blaCTX-M-2-, and blaCTX-M-9-like genes, could amplify a DNA fragment of the expected size from each plasmid. Plasmid pS12-1 shared similar profiles of restriction fragment length polymorphisms with pS12, and indeed, it contained the same blaCTX-M gene, as determined by Southern hybridization and PCR (Fig. 1B and data not shown).
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FIG. 1. Plasmid and PFGE profiles of Hd63 and its derivatives. (A) Plasmid profiles of Hd63 (lane 1) and its transformants, Hd90 and 91 (lanes 2 and 3, respectively). Lane M, lambda DNA digested with HindIII. Numbers at the side indicate the sizes of the bands in lanes M. (B) Southern blot analysis of pS12 (lane 1) and pS12-1 (lane 3). Purified pS12, pS12-1, and pSTV28 plasmids containing the 5.5-kb EcoRI-SphI fragment ("cloned," lane 2) were digested with EcoRI and SphI. DNAs were separated in 1% agarose gel (left panel) and probed with a DNA fragment amplified by the pair of primers for blaCTX-M (right panel). Lane M, lambda DNA digested with HindIII. Numbers at the side indicate the sizes of the bands in lanes M. (C) PFGE profiles of Hd63 (lanes 1 and 3) and its plasmid-cured derivative, Hd92 (lanes 2 and 4). Endonucleases used were BlnI (lanes 1 and 2) and XbaI (lanes 3 and 4). The arrow on the left indicates the band of the BlnI-digested profile of Hd63 putatively corresponding to that of pS12. Lanes M, Salmonella enterica serovar Braenderup H9812 digested with XbaI.
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The 5.5-kb EcoRI-SphI DNA fragment of pS12, containing the CTX-M-type ß-lactamase gene (Fig. 1B), was cloned in the plasmid vector pSTV28 (Takara Bio Inc., Shiga, Japan) and sequenced. Sequence analysis revealed the presence of a blaCTX-M gene identical to blaCTX-M-14 (GenBank accession no. AF252622), belonging to the blaCTX-M-9 group (1). An approximately 3.4-kb region encompassing the blaCTX-M-14 gene (Fig. 2, segment E) was 99% identical to a region of the Klebsiella pneumoniae plasmid pILT-3, containing ISEcp1B, blaCTX-M-19, IS903D, and a truncated gene for a putative iron transporter (11). However, in pS12, an IS26 was found upstream of the blaCTX-M gene, instead of ISEcp1B (although a putative promoter was still present upstream of blaCTX-M-14) (Fig. 2). The upstream region of segment E consists of four discrete segments (A to D); segments A and C (0.8 kb and 0.9 kb, respectively) are 84% and 98% identical to different parts of the E. coli plasmid p1658/97 (GenBank accession no. AF550679). Segment B (0.2 kb) is 99% identical to a part of the E. coli plasmid pTJ100 (GenBank accession no. AY214164). Segment D (0.3 kb) is 100% identical to a part of Tn10 (Fig. 2). These results imply a surprisingly high level of mosaicism in the pS12 region flanking the blaCTX-M gene.
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FIG. 2. A schematic map of a 5.5-kb EcoRI-SphI fragment of pS12 surrounding blaCTX-M-14. An arrow indicates the position and orientation of each open reading frame (Orf) or putative gene presumed by its homology. The line bar in the upper part indicates the location of each insertion sequence. Shown in the lower part are schematic maps containing regions of the plasmids and transposon homologous to the segments (A to E) of the 5.5-kb fragment of pS12. Names are indicated on the left. Putative products of Orfs are indicated in parentheses. Black bars indicate the locations of sequences homologous to those of the corresponding regions of pS12. tnpA, sequence encoding the transposase of each insertion sequence. -35 and -10 represent -35 and -10 sequences of the ISEcp1B-mediated promoter. d-iron, truncated gene encoding a putative outer membrane protein for iron transport.
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Nucleotide sequence accession number. The nucleotide sequence data for the 5.5-kb EcoRI-SphI fragment have been submitted and registered in DDBJ/GenBank/EMBL with accession no. AB180674.
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