High-Resolution Genotyping Unveils Identical Ampicillin-Resistant Enterococcus faecium Strains in Different Sources and Countries: A One Health Approach

Multidrug-resistant (MDR) ( ) infections continue to increase worldwide, although epidemiological studies remain scarce in lower middle-income countries. We aimed to explore which strains circulate in causing human infections in Tunisian healthcare institutions in order to compare them with strains...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Microorganisms (Basel) 2022-03, Vol.10 (3), p.632
Main Authors: Freitas, Ana R, Tedim, Ana P, Almeida-Santos, Ana C, Duarte, Bárbara, Elghaieb, Houyem, Abbassi, Mohamed S, Hassen, Abdennaceur, Novais, Carla, Peixe, Luísa
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ampicillin
ampicillin resistance
Antibiotic resistance
Antibiotics
Antimicrobial agents
Bacteriocins
Cloning
Conjugation
Dispersal
Drug resistance
Enterococcus faecium
Epidemiology
Genomes
Genomic analysis
genomics
Genotyping
Health care
High resolution
hospital
Hospitals
Infections
Meat
Multidrug resistance
One Health
Phenotypes
Software
Strains (organisms)
surveillance
Vancomycin
Virulence
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Summary:Multidrug-resistant (MDR) ( ) infections continue to increase worldwide, although epidemiological studies remain scarce in lower middle-income countries. We aimed to explore which strains circulate in causing human infections in Tunisian healthcare institutions in order to compare them with strains from non-human sources of the same country and finally to position them within the global epidemiology by genomic analysis. Antibiotic susceptibility testing was performed and transfer of vancomycin- and ampicillin- resistance was performed by conjugation. WGS-Illumina was performed on Tunisian strains, and these genomes were compared with genomes from other regions present in the GenBank/NCBI database ( = 10,701 genomes available May 2021). A comparison of phenotypes with those predicted by the recent ResFinder 4.1-CGE webtool unveiled a concordance of 88%, with discordant cases being discussed. cgMLST revealed three clusters [ST18/CT222 ( = 13), ST17/CT948 strains ( = 6), and ST203/CT184 ( = 3)], including isolates from clinical, healthy-human, retail meat, and/or environmental sources in different countries over large time spans (10-12 years). Isolates within each cluster showed similar antibiotic resistance, bacteriocin, and virulence genetic patterns. -AmpR was transferred by VanA-AmpR-ST80 (clinical) and AmpR-ST17- (bovine meat). Identical chromosomal -platforms carrying metabolic/virulence genes were identified between ST17/ST18 strains of clinical, farm animal, and retail meat sources. The overall results emphasize the role of high-resolution genotyping as provided by WGS in depicting the dispersal of MDR- strains carrying relevant adaptive traits across different hosts/regions and the need of a One Health task force to curtail their spread.
ISSN:2076-2607
2076-2607
DOI:10.3390/microorganisms10030632