Journal
PATHOGENS AND GLOBAL HEALTH
Volume 117, Issue 4, Pages 328-341Publisher
TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD
DOI: 10.1080/20477724.2022.2121362
Keywords
Klebsiella pneumoniae; global pathogen; multidrug-resistance; carbapenem; hypervirulence; convergence
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The life span of people in developed countries is growing rapidly, thanks to the extensive use of antibiotics in clinical practice over the past seven decades. Meanwhile, the rapid growth of the population in low and middle income countries has led to the spread of commensal bacteria transmitted through human contact. The boundaries between multidrug-resistance and hypervirulence in Klebsiella pneumoniae clones are fading away, raising concerns.
For people living in developed countries life span is growing at a faster pace than ever. One of the main reasons for such success is attributable to the introduction and extensive use in the clinical practice of antibiotics over the course of the last seven decades. In hospital settings, Klebsiella pneumoniae represents a well-known and commonly described opportunistic pathogen, typically characterized by resistance to several antibiotic classes. On the other hand, the broad wedge of population living in Low and/or Middle Income Countries is increasing rapidly, allowing the spread of several commensal bacteria which are transmitted via human contact. Community transmission has been the original milieu of K. pneumoniae isolates characterized by an outstanding virulence (hypervirulent). These two characteristics, also defined as pathotypes, originally emerged as different pathways in the evolutionary history of K. pneumoniae. For a long time, the Sequence Type (ST), which is defined by the combination of alleles of the 7 housekeeping genes of the Multi-Locus Sequence Typing, has been a reliable marker of the pathotype: multidrug-resistant clones (e.g. ST258, ST147, ST101) in the Western world and hypervirulent clones (e.g. ST23, ST65, ST86) in the Eastern. Currently, the boundaries separating the two pathotypes are fading away due to several factors, and we are witnessing a worrisome convergence in certain high-risk clones. Here we review the evidence available on confluence of multidrug-resistance and hypervirulence in specific K. pneumoniae clones.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available