Prevalence, antimicrobial susceptibility, and genetic diversity of Pseudomonas aeruginosa as intestinal colonizer in the community

Abstract

In this study we determined the prevalence of intestinal carriage, the antimicrobial susceptibility rates, and the genetic diversity of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in the community. From July 2010 to December 2011, a total of 2110 nonreplicate fecal samples from individuals living in Bavaria were collected. Samples were screened for P. aeruginosa by a selective medium and antimicrobial susceptibility was determined by disc diffusion technique. Genetic diversity was assessed by multilocus sequence typing (MLST). Intestinal colonization was detected in 31 of 2110 (1.47%) individuals. None of the isolates showed resistance to aztreonam, imipenem, meropenem, ciprofloxacin, amikacin or colistin. Twenty-five isolates could be assigned to 20 different sequence types (STs), whereas the remaining 6 could not be assigned. Interestingly, four isolates belonged to ST253. These data show that intestinal colonization by P. aeruginosa occurs in the community with high genetic diversity and low rates of antimicrobial resistance.

Keywords::

• Intestinal carriage
• Pseudomonas aeruginosa
• community
• genetic diversity
• antimicrobial susceptibility

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Christiane Förstel, Alexandra Scudlo, Renate Wagner, Nadera Hanifi, and Christiane Strauß for excellent technical assistance.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this report.