Infection and Drug Resistance (Jun 2020)
Association of CRISPR/Cas System with the Drug Resistance in Klebsiella pneumoniae
Abstract
Gang Wang,* Guobin Song,* Yuanhong Xu Department of Clinical Laboratory, The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, Anhui Province, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Yuanhong Xu Email [email protected]: Klebsiella pneumoniae is a common opportunistic pathogen and its production of extended-spectrum β-lactamases (ESBL) and carbapenemases leads to drug resistance. Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPRs) and their associated genes (Cas) are widespread in the genome of many bacteria and are a defense mechanism against foreign invaders such as plasmids and viruses.Purpose: To investigate the prevalence of the CRISPR/Cas system in wild type strains of K. pneumoniae in the hospital and its association with drug resistance.Materials and Methods: A total of 136 strains were collected and characterized their susceptibility to antimicrobial agents. The prevalence of CRISPR/Cas system was detected by PCR and DNA sequencing was analyzed by CRISPRFinder. The statistical analysis of the results was performed by SPSS.Results: We found that 50/136 (37%) isolates produced ESBL and 30/136 (22%) isolates were resistant to carbapenems. These isolates were liable to be multidrug resistant against β-lactams, quinolones, and aminoglycosides. Among the carbapenem-resistant isolates, blaKPC was the main drug resistance-associated gene and different types of ESBL and AmpC genes were present. Resistance to β-lactams, quinolones, aminoglycosides, tetracyclines, and β-lactams/enzyme inhibitor were higher in absence of the CRISPR/Cas system. Eighteen spacers within the CRISPR arrays matched with the genomes of plasmids or phages, some of which carried drug resistance genes.Conclusion: ESBL-producing and carbapenem-resistant K. pneumoniae are more likely to develop multidrug resistance and show an inverse correlation between drug resistance and CRISPR/Cas system. Absence of CRISPR/Cas modules allow for the acquisition of external drug resistance genes.Keywords: CRISPR/Cas, Klebsiella pneumoniae, extended-spectrum β-lactamases, carbapenemases, drug resistance
