Detection of a common plasmid carrying blaKPC-2 in Enterobacteriaceae isolates from distinct cities in China

Abstract

Four isolates of Klebsiella pneumoniae and one isolate of Enterobacter cloacae exhibiting resistance to most β-lactam antibiotics, including oxyimino-cephalosporins and carbapenems, were obtained from different patients among four hospitals in China. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis demonstrated that all the K. pneumoniae isolates belonged to two clone patterns. Multilocus sequence typing showed that the four isolates of K. pneumoniae belonged to two sequence types: ST 23 and ST 351. Conjugation studies with Escherichia coli (EC600) resulted in the transfer of reduced carbapenem susceptibility compared with that of the original isolates. Plasmid restriction analysis and hybridization experiment showed that the five isolates of Enterobacteriaceae carried a common 50 kb bla(KPC-2)-encoding plasmid.