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Antibiotic resistance and carriage class I integron in clinical isolates of Acinetobacter baumannii from Al Muthanna, Iraq

The Journal of Antibiotics volume 75, pages 691–697 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

The goal of this work was to systematically characterize and detect class 1, 2, and 3 integrons with many antibiotic resistance A. baumannii strains collected from a clinical environment in Iraq’s Al-Muthanna hospitals. In this investigation, 24 non-replicated clinical strains of A. baumannii were evaluated using Chrome agar as a selective medium and PCR of the rplB gene. The clonal relatedness of the isolates to class 1 integron was evaluated using a PCR technique. The prevalence of class 1 integron was detected by PCR in only 12 clones of A. baumannii followed by HinfI digestion analysis showing three identical bands at 160 bp, 1350 bp, and 870 bp. In addition, PCR sequencing confirmed the presence of gene cassette arrays consisting of aacA4-catB8-aadA1 (100%) in class 1 integron. The sequence analysis of the integron shows 97.87 identity with A. baumannii isolates from Australia (GenBank accession number CP054302) among A. baumannii isolates. The blast analysis of this class I integron showed that the presence of the intI1, aacA4-catB8-aadA1 genes can considerably boost the acquisition of MDR phenotypes in A. baumannii isolates. We concluded that antibiotics of many types are widely used. The presence of integrons in A. baumannii is concerning for public health. In the clinical setting, it appears that the class 1 integron can be used as a predictive biomarker for the presence of MDR phenotypes. In these bacteria, however, the integron does not possess carbapenemases genes.

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All data from this study are accessible upon request from the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to express our heartfelt thanks to our staff in the microbiology lab at the al Muthanna University for providing facility to do the whole experiments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, College of Science, Al Muthanna University, Samawah, Iraq

    Yasir Adil Jabbar Alabdali

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  1. Yasir Adil Jabbar Alabdali
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All the work, the analysis, and the writing were done by YAJA.

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Correspondence to Yasir Adil Jabbar Alabdali.

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Alabdali, Y.A.J. Antibiotic resistance and carriage class I integron in clinical isolates of Acinetobacter baumannii from Al Muthanna, Iraq. J Antibiot 75, 691–697 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41429-022-00569-9

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