Antimicrobial Resistance and Pathogenicity Determination of Community-Acquired Hypervirulent Klebsiella pneumoniae

Hypervirulent Klebsiella pneumoniae (hvKp) can cause severe invasive infections in healthy and immunocompromised individuals. However, there is still lack of a consensus definition of hvKp. In this study, we solely focused on the clinical isolates cultured from subcutaneous drainage of community-acquired liver abscess cases, and an hvKp strain was defined on the basis of co-harboring virulence gene regulator of mucoid phenotype A (rmpA)/rmpA2, iucA, iroB, and peg-344. A total of 47 nonrepetitive hvKp isolates were collected from January 2015 to December 2017 in a tertiary teaching hospital in Shanghai, China. All isolates were susceptible to the commonly used antibiotics. Only one strain (RJ-Kp24) had the positive detection of blaCTX-M-14 and was resistant to ceftazidime, cefotaxime, and cefepime. S1-pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and southern hybridization confirmed the presence of a roughly 90 kb blaCTX-M-14-carrying plasmid and a roughly 240 kb virulence plasmid. Further analysis revealed that ST23 (n = 17) sequence type and K1 (n = 20) and K2 (n = 9) serotypes were dominant in hvKp, while only 31.9% (15/47) and 46.8% (22/47) of hvKp isolates displayed hypermucoviscosity and resistance to serum killing, respectively. For further evaluation of the pathogenicity of hvKp, six representative strains were randomly selected. Three strains, RJ-Kp10, RJ-Kp28, and RJ-Kp31, displayed a remarkable resistance to serum killing and neutrophil phagocytosis. Mouse lethality assay revealed that these strains had the 50% lethal dose (LD50) of 102-103 cell forming unit (CFU), while others had the LD50 of 104–105 CFU. These results demonstrated that strain virulence differed significantly within these defined hvKp. The convergence of multidrug resistance and enhanced virulence in K. pneumoniae has presented a major infection control challenge.