Development of macrolide resistance in Bordetella bronchiseptica is associated with the loss of virulence.

Background: Why resistance to specific antibiotics emerges and spreads rapidly in some bacteria confronting these drugs but not others remains a mystery. Resistance to erythromycin in the respiratory pathogens Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus pneumoniae emerged rapidly and increased problematically. However, resistance is uncommon amongst the classic Bordetella species despite infections being treated with this macrolide for decades.

Objectives: We examined whether the apparent progenitor of the classic Bordetella spp., Bordetella bronchiseptica, is able to rapidly generate de novo resistance to antibiotics and, if so, why such resistance might not persist and propagate.

Methods: Independent strains of B. bronchiseptica resistant to erythromycin were generated in vitro by successively passaging them in increasing subinhibitory concentrations of this macrolide. Resistant mutants obtained were evaluated for their capacity to infect mice, and for other virulence properties including adherence, cytotoxicity and induction of cytokines.

Results: B. bronchiseptica rapidly developed stable and persistent antibiotic resistance de novo. Unlike the previously reported trade-off in fitness, multiple independent resistant mutants were not defective in their rates of growth in vitro but were consistently defective in colonizing mice and lost a variety of virulence phenotypes. These changes rendered them avirulent but phenotypically similar to the previously described growth phase associated with the ability to survive in soil, water and/or other extra-mammalian environments.

Conclusions: These observations raise the possibility that antibiotic resistance in some organisms results in trade-offs that are not quantifiable in routine measures of general fitness such as growth in vitro, but are pronounced in various aspects of infection in the natural host.