High Prevalence and Significant Association of ESBL and QNR Genes in Pathogenic Klebsiella pneumoniae Isolates of Patients from Kolkata, India.

Pathogenic Klebsiella pneumoniae, resistant to beta-lactam and quinolone drugs, is widely recognized as important bacteria causing array of diseases. The resistance property is obtained by acquisition of plasmid encoded blaTEM, blaSHV, blaCTX-M, QNRA, QNRB and QNRS genes. The aim of this study was to document the prevalence and association of these resistant genes in K. pneumoniae infecting patients in India. Approximately 97 and 76.7 % of the 73 K. pneumoniae isolates showed resistance towards beta-lactam and quinolone drugs respectively. Bla genes were detected in 74 % of K. pneumoniae isolates; with prevalence in the following order: blaTEM > blaSHV > blaCTXM. QNR genes were detected in 67 % samples. Chi-square analysis revealed significant association between presence of bla and qnr genes in our study (P value = 0.000125). Sequence analysis of some blaTEM, blaSHV, blaCTX-M and QNRB PCR products revealed presence of blaTEM1 (GenBank accession: JN193522), blaTEM116 (JN193523 and JN193524), blaSHV11, blaCTXM72 variants (JF523199) and QNRB1 (JN193526 and JN193527) in our samples.