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Evolution of an integron carrying blaVIM-2 in Eastern Europe: report from the SENTRY Antimicrobial Surveillance
Timothy R Walsh1, Mark A Toleman, Waleria Hryniewicz
1Department of Pathology and Microbiology, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TD, UK. t.r.walsh@bristol.ac.uk
Abstract:
As part of the SENTRY Antimicrobial Surveillance Program, an imipenem-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa strain (81-11963A) was isolated from the blood culture of a female neonate institutionalized at the local children's hospital in Warsaw, Poland. Cloning of an imipenem resistance determinant revealed it to be a VIM-2 metallo-beta-lactamase, but sequence analysis of DNA adjacent to blaVIM-2 revealed it to have a unique gene context. Downstream of the blaVIM-2 gene resides an aacA4 gene encoding the AAC(6')-Ib aminoglycoside acetyltransferase. The integron containing blaVIM-2 shows high similarity to that reported from In58 in France but was novel in that it possessed a gene cassette with a 59 truncated base element only 19 base pairs (bp) long, consisting of a conserved core site and an inverse core site separated by only 5 bp. This appears to be the first report of a metallo-beta-lactamase gene arising from a pathogenic strain in Eastern Europe.