Sequencing characterization of housekeeping genes among Klebsiella pneumoniae isolated from burn patients

Abstract

Burn wound infections are one of the most important impairments that occur in the acute period following injury and colonization by the pathogenic agents, including gram-positive, gram-negative bacteria and yeasts. The study included 210 clinical swab samples have been collected from burn- wound patients and cultured on blood agar, MacConkey agar and Eosin methylene blue agar, the period from 1/3/2016 to 30/8/2016 at different hospitals in Baghdad city. By microscopic characterizations, morphological and biochemical reactions, the results showed that 42 (37.5 %) isolates belong to Klebsiella pneumoniae. The analysis of (10) clinical origin of Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates by multilocus sequence typing show the relationship between the local and global isolates which belonged to 7 housekeeping genes (rpoB;beta-subunit of RNA polymerase, gapA; glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase, mdh; malate dehydrogenase, pgi; phosphoglucose isomerase, phoE; phosphorine E, infB; translation initiation factor 2, tonB; periplasmic energy transducer). The present study the results showed the 10 isolates of K. pneumoniae were identified into different sequence type (ST): ST 14 and 15 for (IQK1, IQK2, IQK3, IQK4, IQK5, IQK6 and IQK7), ST 266, 54, 709, 728 and 1177 for (IQK8 and IQK9) and ST 665, 975 and 2149 for (IQK10). In addition, the result showed 100% identities with previously reported genes. There was no information on the sequence type (ST) (an allelic profile) of K. pneumoniae in Iraq. According to the results of the present study, the most occurrence clones found in Baghdad hospitals were endemic ST14 and 15, which accounted for 70% of the isolates (n=10). The presence of the ST14 and 15 clones in Iraq which came closer to global (14 and 15 STs) clones might be indicating intercontinental transmission because these clones were added to the list of the strains that isolated from different countries.