High Prevalence of Multiple Drug Resistance among ESBLs-Producing Klebsiella pneumoniae Isolated from Hospitalized Patients in Isfahan, Iran

Background: this study was to evaluate the prevalence of ctx-m and tem type esbls-producingk. pneumoniae and determination of mdr, xdr, and pdr phenotypes of these isolates as well as find out the genetic relationship and molecular typing of these isolates using phenotypic and genotypicmethods. methods: non-repetitive 96 k. pneumonia isolates were isolated from hospitalized patients in al-zahra hospital of isfahan, iran. the antibiotic susceptibility test was assessed for 20 antibiotics using kirby-bauer disk diffusion method. the frequency of esbl-producing isolates was determined byphenotypic confirmatory test. all esbls-producing isolates were assessed for blatem and blactx-m genes using pcr method. molecular typing was performed by enterobacterial repetitive intergenicconsensus sequence-based pcr (eric-pcr).results: among 96 isolates, 58 isolates (60.4%) were esbl-producers. in this study, 85.7% and 30.3% of esbl-producing isolates showed mdr and xdr phenotypes, respectively. no pdr isolate wasfound. pcr amplification on esbl-producing isolates showed that 47 (81%) isolates were carriedblatem gene, while blactx-m was detected in all isolates (100%). eric-pcr typing was characterized the high genetic similarity among esbl-producing k. pneumonia isolates and revealed 32 band pattern f or the isolates. conclusion: this study showed high prevalence of important esbl genes (blactx-m and blatem genes) among the k. pneumoniae isolated from in-patients. constant following of esbls, also identificationof their types, in bacteria isolated from hospitalized patients has an important clinical impact. it canprovide valuable information for the choice of appropriate antibacterial therapy and decrease ofantibiotic resistance.