Virulence Factors and Antimicrobial Resistance of Uropathogenic EQ101 UPEC Isolated from UTI Patient in Quetta, Balochistan, Pakistan.

Infectious diseases have been tremendously increasing as the organisms of even normal flora become opportunistic and cause an infection, and ( EQ101) is one of them. Urinary tract infections are caused by various microorganisms, but is the primary cause of almost 70%-90% of all UTIs. It has multiple strains, possessing diverse virulence factors, contributing to its pathogenicity. Furthermore, these virulent strains also can cause overlapping pathogenesis by sharing resistance and virulence factors among each other. The current study is aimed at analyzing the genetic variants associated with multi-drug-resistant (MDR) using the whole genome sequencing platform. The study includes 100 uropathogenic (UPEC) microorganisms obtained from urine samples out of which 44% were multi-drug-resistant (MDR) . Bacteria have been isolated and antimicrobial susceptibility test (AST) was determined by disk diffusion method on the Mueller-Hinton agar plate as recommended by the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) 2020, and one isolate has been selected which shows resistance to most of the antibiotics, and that isolate has been analyzed by whole genome sequencing (WGS), accompanied by data and phylogenetic analysis, respectively. Organisms were showing resistance against ampicillin (10 g), cefixime (5 g), ceftriaxone (30 g), nalidixic acid (30 g), ciprofloxacin (5 g), and ofloxacin (5 g) on antimicrobial susceptibility test. WGS were done on selected isolate which identified 25 virulence genes (, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and ) and seven housekeeping genes (, , , , , , and ). Among resistance genes, seven genes (, , , , , , and ) were identified to be involved in antibiotic efflux, three AMR genes (, , and ) were involved in antibiotic inactivation, and two genes ( and ) were found to be involved in antibiotic drug replacement. Our data identified antibiotic resistance and virulence genes of the isolate. We suggest further research work to establish region-based resistance profile in comparison with the global resistance pattern.