Dissemin is shutting down on January 1st, 2025

Published in

MDPI, Antibiotics, 1(10), p. 48, 2021

DOI: 10.3390/antibiotics10010048

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Susceptibility Testing of Colistin for Acinetobacter baumannii: How Far Are We from the Truth?

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

Full text: Download

Green circle
Preprint: archiving allowed
Green circle
Postprint: archiving allowed
Green circle
Published version: archiving allowed
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Acinetobacter baumannii is involved in life-threatening nosocomial infections, mainly in the intensive care units (ICUs), and often colistin may represent the last therapeutic opportunity. The susceptibility to colistin of 51 epidemiologically typed A. baumannii strains isolated in 2017 from clinical samples of patients hospitalized in the ICU of a tertiary care academic hospital was investigated. All isolates were carbapenem-resistant due to the presence of the blaOXA-23 gene in sequence group 1 (international clonal lineage II) and sequence group 4 (related to international clonal lineage II) isolates, and to the blaOXA-24/40 gene in sequence group 2 (international clonal lineage I) isolates. Vitek®2, agar diffusion, and broth microdilution tests showed major discordancy (≥2 dilution factors) in the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) values for colistin in 24 out of 51 isolates, resulting in erroneous reporting of qualitative susceptibility data for eight isolates. In growth kinetics experiments in the presence of colistin, five isolates grew with drug concentrations above the susceptibility breakpoint when incubated for >12 h, and three isolates showed the presence of heteroresistant subpopulations. This study highlights that the high frequency of isolation of carbapenem-resistant A. baumannii strains in high-risk infectious wards requires an accurate application of methods for detecting susceptibility to antibiotics, in particular to colistin, so as to ensure a correct therapeutic approach.