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Case Reports
. 2024 Mar 14;14(1):6220.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-55884-y.

Enterobacter asburiae ST229: an emerging carbapenemases producer

Vittoria Mattioni Marchetti #  1 , Angela Kuka #  2   3 , Aurora Piazza  4   5 , Stefano Gaiarsa  2 , Cristina Merla  2 , Mariangela Sottosanti  6 , Patrizia Cambieri  2 , Roberta Migliavacca  1   7 , Fausto Baldanti  1   2
Affiliations
Case Reports

Enterobacter asburiae ST229: an emerging carbapenemases producer

Vittoria Mattioni Marchetti et al. Sci Rep. .

Erratum in

Abstract

Enterobacter asburiae, member of the Enterobacter cloacae complex (ECC) group, shows an increasing clinical relevance being responsible for infections like pneumonia, urinary tract infections and septicemia. The aim of the present study was the investigation of the genomic features of two XDR E. asburiae ST229 clinical strains co-carrying blaNDM-1 and blaVIM-1 determinants, collected in October 2021 and in June 2022, respectively. Two E. asburiae strains were collected from rectal swabs of as many patients admitted to the cardiopulmonary intensive care unit of Fondazione I.R.C.C.S. "Policlinico San Matteo" in Pavia, Italy. Based on the antibiotic susceptibility profile results, both isolates showed an XDR phenotype, retaining susceptibility only to fluoroquinolones. Both isolates shared identical resistome, virulome, plasmid content, and belonged to ST229, a rarely reported sequence type. They co-harbored blaNDM-1 and blaVIM-1 genes, that resulted located on transferable plasmids by conjugation and transformation. Moreover, both strains differed in 24 SNPs and showed genetic relatedness with E. asburiae ST709 and ST27. We described the first case of ST229 E. asburiae co-harboring blaNDM-1 and blaVIM-1 in Italy. This study points out the emergence of carbapenemases in low-risk pathogens, representing a novel challenge for public health, that should include such types of strains in dedicated surveillance programs. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing was carried out using Thermo Scientific™ Sensititre™ Gram Negative MIC Plates DKMGN. Both strains underwent whole-genome sequencing (WGS) using Illumina Miseq platform. Resistome, plasmidome, virulome, MLST, plasmid MLST and a SNPs-based phylogenetic tree were in silico determined.

Keywords: Enterobacter asburiae; Carbapenemase-producing; Epidemiology; Low-risk pathogens; NDM-1; Surveillance; VIM-1; WGS.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Heatmap of the virulence genes content of the thirteen E. asburiae strains, including the two objects of the study (in red), clonally related. In orange is reported the further ST229 E. asburiae strain (accession number PDT000533673.19).
Figure 2
Figure 2
(A) timeline of the date of collection of the 481 E. asburiae (https://microreact.org/). (B) epidemiological map of the MLST of the 481 E. asburiae genomes obtained from the NCBI database (https://www.mapchart.net/). The dimension of the circle is related with the number of genomes associated to a particular region of origin.
Figure 3
Figure 3
iTOL v6 raffiguration of SNPs-based tree for the 13 selected genomes obtained by parsnp and the related genome content. Green grid = source of isolates; red grid = carbapenem- and colistin-resistance genes; purple grid = plasmid content; pink grid = pMLST.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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