scholarly journals Cartography of opportunistic pathogens and antibiotic resistance genes in a tertiary hospital environment

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (6) ◽  
pp. 941-951 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kern Rei Chng ◽  
◽  
Chenhao Li ◽  
Denis Bertrand ◽  
Amanda Hui Qi Ng ◽  
...  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kern Rei Chng ◽  
Chenhao Li ◽  
Denis Bertrand ◽  
Amanda Hui Qi Ng ◽  
Junmei Samantha Kwah ◽  
...  

AbstractThere is growing attention surrounding hospital acquired infections (HAIs) due to high associated healthcare costs, compounded by the scourge of widespread multi-antibiotic resistance. Although hospital environment disinfection is well acknowledged to be key for infection control, an understanding of colonization patterns and resistome profiles of environment-dwelling microbes is currently lacking. We report the first extensive genomic characterization of microbiomes (428), common HAI-associated microbes (891) and transmissible drug resistance cassettes (1435) in a tertiary hospital environment based on a 3-timepoint sampling (1 week and >1 year apart) of 179 sites from 45 beds. Deep shotgun metagenomic sequencing unveiled two distinct ecological niches of microbes and antibiotic resistance genes characterized by biofilm-forming and human microbiome influenced environments that display corresponding patterns of divergence over space and time. To study common nosocomial pathogens that were typically present at low abundances, a combination of culture enrichment and long-read nanopore sequencing was used to obtain thousands of high contiguity genomes (2347), phage sequences (1693) and closed plasmids (5910), a significant fraction of which (>60%) are not represented in current sequence databases. These high-quality assemblies and metadata enabled a rich characterization of resistance gene combinations, phage diversity, plasmid architectures, and the dynamic nature of hospital environment resistomes and their reservoirs. Phylogenetic analysis identified multidrug resistant strains as being more widely distributed and stably colonizing across hospital sites. Further genomic comparisons with clinical isolates across multiple species supports the hypothesis that multidrug resistant strains can persist in the hospital environment for extended periods (>8 years) to opportunistically infect patients. These findings highlight the importance of characterizing antibiotic resistance reservoirs in the hospital environment and establishes the feasibility of systematic genomic surveys to help target resources more efficiently for preventing HAIs.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leilei Qu ◽  
Qiuhui Pan ◽  
Xubin Gao ◽  
Mingfeng He

During the past decades, the increase of antibiotic resistance has become a major concern worldwide. The researchers found that superbugs with new type of resistance genes (NDM-1) have two aspects of transmission characteristics; the first is that the antibiotic resistance genes can horizontally transfer among bacteria, and the other is that the superbugs can spread between humans through direct contact. Based on these two transmission mechanisms, we study the dynamics of population in hospital environment where superbugs exist. In this paper, we build three mathematic models to illustrate the dynamics of patients with bacterial resistance in hospital environment. The models are analyzed using stability theory of differential equations. Positive equilibrium points of the system are investigated and their stability analysis is carried out. Moreover, the numerical simulation of the proposed model is also performed which supports the theoretical findings.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zumara younus ◽  
Sagar M. Goyal ◽  
Vikash Singh ◽  
Aamer Ikram ◽  
Muhammad Imran

Abstract Background Enterococci are ubiquitous microorganisms having diverse ecological niches but mostly prominently in gastrointestinal tract of humans and animals. Production of enterocins make them used as probiotics, but in last few years their role as probiotic become ambiguous. This ambiguity in their probiotic role is related to presence of virulence factors and antibiotic resistance genes. Moreover, these virulence traits are also known to be transfer genetically which make them opportunistic pathogens in gastrointestinal track. These reports suggest serious concerns related to enterococcus before using them as probiotics. In present study Whole-genome sequencing (WGS) of Enterococcus spp was done for checking presence of resistance and virulence genes, isolated from human gut.Methods and resultsFour human origin Enterococcus spp including Enterococcus faecalis, Enterococcus casseliflavus, and two Enterococcus gallinarum were isolated from human fecal samples, further cultured on blood and MacConkey agar. Sanger sequencing was done using Applied Biosystems 3730xl DNA Analyzer. These strains were further subjected to WGS using oxford nano pore technology MinION. Raw data was analyzed using free online tool epi2me. The Comprehensive Antibiotic Resistance Database (CARD) and RAST software’s were used to look for presence of antibiotic resistance genes in these strains. Resistance determinants for clinically important antibiotics (vancomycin) and functional virulence factor genes were detected. G-view server was used for comparative genomics of all strains.Conclusion:The draft genomic sequencing of enterococcus suggested that Enterococcus faecalis, Enterococcus casseliflavus and Enterococcus gallinarum strains are opportunistic pathogens, having antibiotic resistance genes. All isolates have vancomycin resistance genes which they also expressed phenotypically. Some genes related to bacteriocin resistance were also present in E. casseliflavus and E. gallinarum.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Chehelgerdi ◽  
Reza Ranjbar

Abstract Background The present investigation aimed to assess the antibiotic resistance properties and distribution of virulence factors in the Streptococcus spp. isolated from hospital cockroaches. Methods Six-hundred and sixty cockroach samples were collected. Cockroaches were vigorously washed with normal saline, and the achieved saline was used for bacterial culture. Isolated Streptococcus spp. were subjected to disk diffusion as well as PCR amplification of virulence factors and antibiotic resistance genes. Results Prevalence of S. pyogenes, S. agalactiae and S. pneumonia was 4.82%, 1.66% and 6.96%, respectively. The highest prevalence of S. pyogenes, S. agalactiae and S. pneumonia were found in oriental (5.71%), oriental (2.85%) and American (7.71%) cockroaches, respectively. Cfb (53.93%), cyl (52.8%), scaa (51.68%) and glna (50.56%) were the most commonly detected streptococcal virulence factors. Pbp2b (71.91%), pbp2 × (58.42%), mefA (46.06%), ermB (46.06%) and tetM (46.06%) were the most commonly detected antibiotic resistance genes. Streptococcal spp. exhibited the highest prevalence of resistance against tetracycline (80.89%), trimethoprim (65.16%), and penicillin (56.17%). Conclusion To the best of our knowledge, this is the first prevalence report of virulence factors and antibiotic resistance genes in the Streptococcal spp. isolated from American, German and oriental hospital cockroaches. Findings recommended a certain role for cockroaches in the transmission of nosocomial infections and particularly those caused by virulent and resistant Streptococcus spp. in the hospital environment.


Open Biology ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (12) ◽  
pp. 170094 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mehul Jani ◽  
Soham Sengupta ◽  
Kelsey Hu ◽  
Rajeev K. Azad

Staphylococcus aureus is a versatile pathogen that is capable of causing infections in both humans and animals. It can cause furuncles, septicaemia, pneumonia and endocarditis. Adaptation of S. aureus to the modern hospital environment has been facilitated, in part, by the horizontal acquisition of drug resistance genes, such as mecA gene that imparts resistance to methicillin. Horizontal acquisitions of islands of genes harbouring virulence and antibiotic resistance genes have made S. aureus resistant to commonly used antibiotics. To decipher genomic islands (GIs) in 22 hospital- and 9 community-associated methicillin-resistant S. aureus strains and classify a subset of GIs carrying virulence and resistance genes as pathogenicity and resistance islands respectively, we applied a host of methods for localizing genomic islands in prokaryotic genomes. Surprisingly, none of the frequently used GI prediction methods could perform well in delineating the resistance islands in the S. aureus genomes. Rather, a gene clustering procedure exploiting biases in codon usage for identifying horizontally transferred genes outperformed the current methods for GI detection, in particular in identifying the known islands in S. aureus including the SCC mec island that harbours the mecA resistance gene. The gene clustering approach also identified novel, as yet unreported islands, with many of these found to harbour virulence and/or resistance genes. These as yet unexplored islands may provide valuable information on the evolution of drug resistance in S. aureus .


F1000Research ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 903
Author(s):  
Otarigho Benson

Background: The global emergence and re-emergence of antibiotic resistance among the Pseudomonas pathogens causes great problems to patients undergoing chemotherapy. However, there is limited comparative information on the antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) and mechanisms across the Pseudomonas pathogenic groups. Methods: The complete genomes of five Pseudomonas pathogen groups, P. aeruginosa, P. fluorescens, P. putida, P. stutzeri and P. syringae, were analyzed for ARGs. Results: A significant number of ARGs were identified in the P. aeruginosa genome compared to the other Pseudomonas pathogens. The opportunistic pathogens P. stutzeri and P. putida were shown to be the closest to P. aeruginosa with an average nucleotide identity (%) of 80.30 and 79.52.  The pathogen genome with the least hit was P. stutzeri. The four major antibiotic resistance mechanisms that include the efflux, inactivation, target alteration and efflux::target alteration were reported. Conclusion: The findings of this brief report could be useful in understanding the chemotherapeutics against antibiotic resistance strains of Pseudomonas pathogens


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