Open AccessIn Vivo Acquisition of a Plasmid-Mediated bla KPC-2 Gene among Clonal Isolates of Serratia marcescens
Author(s) -
Athanassios Tsakris,
Evangelia Voulgari,
Aggeliki Poulou,
Maria Kimouli,
Spyros Pournaras,
Kyriaki Ranellou,
Olga Kosmopoulou,
Dimitra Petropoulou
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
journal of clinical microbiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.349
H-Index - 255
eISSN - 1070-633X
pISSN - 0095-1137
DOI - 10.1128/jcm.00264-10
Subject(s) - serratia marcescens , klebsiella pneumoniae , microbiology and biotechnology , plasmid , biology , carbapenem , enterobacteriaceae , typing , virology , gene , escherichia coli , antibiotics , genetics
Three patients admitted to a Greek hospital were infected with Serratia marcescens isolates that exhibited reduced susceptibility to carbapenems and harbored Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase (KPC) enzymes. In two of these cases, the patients were initially infected by carbapenem-susceptible S. marcescens isolates. Molecular typing and plasmid analysis suggested that all three patients had clonally indistinguishable isolates of S. marcescens that acquired a plasmid-mediated bla(KPC-2) gene during the hospitalization.