Co-harboring of cephalosporin (bla)/colistin (mcr) resistance genes among Enterobacteriaceae from flies in Thailand

The spreading of antimicrobial-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, especially those co-harboring plasmid-mediated cephalosporin (bla) and colistin (mcr) resistance genes, is becoming increasingly problematic. As a vector, flies carry antimicrobial-resistant bacteria (ARB) into human and livestock habitats. To investigate ARB in flies, we collected 235 flies from 27 sites (18 urban areas, five pig farms and four chicken farms) in Thailand during 2013-2015. Cefotaxime-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CtxRE) and bla-positive CtxRE were isolated from 70 (29.8%) and 48 (20.4%) flies, respectively. In 93 bla-positive CtxRE isolates that included Escherichia coli, Enterobacter spp., and Klebsiella pneumoniae from 48 flies, the most frequent bla gene was TEM (n = 62), followed by CTX-M-55 (n = 31), CTX-M-14 (n = 26), CMY-2 (n = 24) and SHV (n = 10), and 58 isolates harbored multiple types of these genes. In addition, we detected the mcr-1 (n = 1) and mcr-3 (n = 19) genes in bla-positive CtxRE isolates from 16 flies. In conjugation experiments, 10 mcr-3- and bla-positive isolates exhibited co-transfer of mcr-3 and blaTEM-1 genes. These results suggest that a relatively high proportion of flies in Thailand carries cephalosporin-resistant Enterobacteriaceae harboring co-transmissible cephalosporin and colistin resistance genes.