Antimicrobial resistance patterns and genotypic diversity between clinical and water systems isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in Cali, Colombia

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is considered an opportunistic pathogen, causing a wide variety of infections in compromised hosts, also frequently develops multi-resistance to antibiotics and can colonize various habitats, including water systems. The main aim of this study was to investigate antibiotics susceptibility pattern, genotypic diversity and detection of resistence genes in P. aeruginosa isolates from clinical and aquatic environment sources. Of the 220 P. aeruginosa isolates examined, 48 were clinical isolates and 172 isolates from wastewater and freshwater. Susceptibility to eight antimicrobial agents was carried out by disk diffusion method. Clinical and environmental isolates were screened for the presence of the genes encoding blaKPC-2, blaCTX-M-9, blaPER-1, blaOXA-10, blaIMP-1, blaVIM-2 and blaampC by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Isolates were examined with PCR-SSCP analysis of partial DNAr 16S sequence. Isolates were mainly resistant to cefoxitin. Multidrug-resistant P. aeruginosa (MDRPA) strains were found in 70% and 90.3% of the clinical and environmental isolates, respectively. The prevalence rates of â-lactamase genes were recorded (blaKPC-2 41.3%, blaVIM-2 36.8%, blaIMP-1 13.6%, blaCTX-M-9 10.9% and blaampC 10.5%,). The PCR-SSCP analysis showed three conformational patterns. All clinical isolates and most environmental isolates were grouped into a single cluster. In this study, we found that P. aeruginosa strains recovered from city water systems must be considered potential reservoir for ESBL genes, especially blaKPC-2 and blaVIM-2.