Evaluation of Antibiotic Resistance and adeABC, adeR, adeS Efflux Pump Genes among Foodborne and Clinical Acinetobacter spp. in Türkiye

Background: the adeabc efflux pump has a crucial role in the resistance of acinetobacter baumannii strains to antimicrobial agents; it is encoded by adeabc, ader, ades genes. we evaluated antibiotic resistance, efflux pump genes, clonal relationships, and analyzed a probable correlation that can exist between antibiotic re-sistance and the aforementioned genes. methods: we conducted this study on 27 food-originated and 50 human clinical acinetobacter spp. in southern türkiye. maldi-tof system and disc diffusion/agar dilution (colistin) methods were used for the identifica-tion and antibiotic susceptibility. the efflux pump genes and genetic relatedness of the two groups were inves-tigated by (pcr) and (pfge) methods. results: foodborne a. dijkshoorniae strain was multidrug- resistant (mdr), and none of them resistant to col-istin. most of the clinical isolates (92%) were extensive-drug resistant (xdr); highest resistant to ceftazidime, piperacillin-tazobactam, and imipenem (47, 94%), and were lowest to colistin (7, 14%), respec-tively. adeabc, and ader, ades genes were (23, 85.2%), (9, 33.3%), (27, 100%) and (10, 37.3%), (18, 66.7%) in foodborne strains respectively. these rates were (43, 86%), (48, 96%), (50, 100%), and (34, 68%), (48, 96.7%) in clinical strains respectively. a positive correlation existed between adea gene positivity and piperacillin-tazobactam, ceftazidime, gentamycin, imipenem (p=0.048), amikacin (p=0.007) and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (p=0.029) resistance in clinical strains. a positive correlation of trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole resistance and ades gene positivity was seen in foodborne strains (p=0.018). conclusion: multiple-efflux pump genes rise in parallel to multidrug-resistance in clinical isolates, while sus-ceptible to diverse antibiotics; food may be a potential provenance for the dissemination of adeabc, ader and ades genes.