Screening and Characterization of Multidrug-Resistant among Hospitalized Patients in the African Archipelago of Cape Verde.

This study aimed to investigate, for the first time, the occurrence and characteristics of extended-spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL)- and carbapenemase-producing in Cape Verde. A total of 98 inpatients hospitalized at Hospital Universitário Agostinho Neto were screened for rectal colonization. All ESBL- and carbapenemase-producing isolates were tested for antimicrobial susceptibility and characterized by multilocus sequence typing. Mating-out assay followed by PCR-based replicon typing were performed to characterize the plasmids harboring carbapenemase encoding genes. A large proportion of patients carried ESBL- or carbapenemase-producing (56% and 6%, respectively). Among 93 ESBL-producing isolates, there were mainly (58%) and (37%). Five different ESBLs were detected, with CTX-M-15 being highly predominant (92%). Six carbapenemase-producing isolates (five and one ) were recovered, and all of the OXA-48-like type (four OXA-181, one OXA-48, and one OXA-244). The gene was located on an IncFI-type plasmid, the gene on IncFI or IncX3 plasmids, and the gene was found to be chromosomally located. The five carbapenemase-producing isolates belonged to five distinct sequence types. This study overall showed a very high prevalence of ESBL-producing , as well as the emergence of carbapenemase producers in this hospital.