Establishment of Experimental Murine Peritonitis Model with Hog Gastric Mucin for Carbapenem-Resistant Gram-Negative Bacteria

Abstract

Animal models are essential to studies of infectious diseases. The use of mice to test bacterial infection has been extensively reported. However, methods applied to clinical isolates, particularly for carbapenem-resistant bacteria, must be tailored according to the infection models and bacteria used. In this study, we infected 6-week-old female BALB/c mice intraperitoneally with different strains of resistant bacteria plus 3% hog gastric mucin. This method was found to be efficient and readily applicable for investigation of carbapenem-resisant Gram-negative pathogens (e.g., Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Acinetobacter baumannii) detected in Korea.

Keywords: Drug resistance, Multidrug resistance; Gram-negative bacteria; Laboratory animal models; Peritonitis.

Figure 1

Carbapenem-resistant Escherichia coli (EC-1), Klebsiella pneumoniae (KP-4), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PA-3) and Acinetobacter baumannii (Aci_100087) with or without 3% hog gastric mucin. Results show that animals inoculated with strains without mucin treatment failed in infection for both mice species, whereas with mucin, infection was successfully induced 24 h after the experiment except for E. coli infection of ICR mice. 3% hog gastric mucin dissolved in phosphate-buffered saline was used as a negative control for each experimental group.