Occurrence of high-risk clones of Klebsiella pneumoniae ST11, ST340, and ST855 carrying the blaKPC-2, blaNDM-1, blaNDM-5, and blaNDM-7 genes from colonized and infected patients in Brazil

Aims: Determine which sequence type (ST) clones were carrying the bla(KPC), bla(NDM), bla(VIM), bla(IMP), and bla(GES) genes and their variants in clinical isolates of multidrug-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae.Methods and Results: Ten K. pneumoniae isolates were obtained from the colonized and infected patients in a public hospital in the city of Recife-PE, in northeastern Brazil, and were further analyzed. The detection of carbapenem resistance genes and the seven housekeeping genes [for multilocus sequence typing (MLST) detection] were done with PCR and sequencing. The bla(KPC) and bla(NDM) genes were detected concomitantly in all isolates, with variants being detected bla(NDM-1), bla(NDM-5), bla(NDM-7), and bla(KPC-2). The bla(KPC-2) and bla(NDM-1) combination being the most frequent. Molecular typing by MLST detected three types of high-risk ST clones, associated with the clonal complex 258, ST11/CC258 in eight isolates, and ST855/CC258 and ST340/CC258 in the other two isolates.Conclusions: These findings are worrying, as they have a negative impact on the scenario of antimicrobial resistance, and show the high genetic variability of K. pneumoniae and its ability to mutate resistance genes and risk of dissemination via different ST clones.