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. 2021 Mar 5;9(3):537.
doi: 10.3390/microorganisms9030537.

High Prevalence of Carbapenemase-Producing Acinetobacter baumannii in Wound Infections, Ghana, 2017/2018

Mathieu Monnheimer  1 , Paul Cooper  2 , Harold K Amegbletor  2 , Theresia Pellio  2 , Uwe Groß  1 , Yvonne Pfeifer  3 , Marco H Schulze  1   4
Affiliations

High Prevalence of Carbapenemase-Producing Acinetobacter baumannii in Wound Infections, Ghana, 2017/2018

Mathieu Monnheimer et al. Microorganisms. .

Abstract

Three years after a prospective study on wound infections in a rural hospital in Ghana revealed no emergence of carbapenem-resistant bacteria we initiated a new study to assess the prevalence of multidrug-resistant pathogens. Three hundred and one samples of patients with wound infections were analysed for the presence of resistant bacteria in the period August 2017 till March 2018. Carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter (A.) baumannii were further characterized by resistance gene sequencing, PCR-based bacterial strain typing, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and multilocus sequence typing (MLST "Oxford scheme"). A. baumanni was detected in wound infections of 45 patients (15%); 22 isolates were carbapenem-resistant. Carbapenemases NDM-1 and/or OXA-23 were detected in all isolates; two isolates harboured additionally OXA-420. PFGE and MLST analyses confirmed the presence of one A. baumannii strain in 17 patients that was assigned to the worldwide spread sequence type ST231 and carried NDM-1 and OXA-23. Furthermore, two new A. baumannii STs (ST2145 and ST2146) were detected in two and three patients, respectively. Within three years the prevalence of carbapenem-resistant A. baumannii increased dramatically in the hospital. The early detection of multidrug-resistant bacteria and prevention of their further spread are only possible if continuous surveillance and molecular typing will be implemented.

Keywords: Acinetobacter baumannii; Ghana; NDM-1; OXA-23; OXA-420; carbapenem resistance; rural; wound infections.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Distribution of Acinetobacter baumannii isolates according to wound infection type and carbapenem susceptibility.
Figure 2
Figure 2
ApaI-macrorestriction and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis of 22 carbapenem-resistant A. baumannii isolates from wound infections, Ghana, 2017/2018. 1 PCR Turton et al. 2007 [32]. STOX, sequence type assigned by multilocus sequence typing (MLST Oxford scheme https://pubmlst.org/organisms/acinetobacter-baumannii, assessed on 3 August 2020); n.t. non-typeable.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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