Antibiotic resistance and multilocus sequence typing of Enterococcus faecium strains isolated from ;children under 3 years old in Sui county, Henan province / 中华微生物学和免疫学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate the antibiotic resistance, virulence genes, and sequence types of Enterococcus faecium ( E. faecium) strains isolated from children under 3 years old in Sui county, Henan province. Methods Kirby-Bauer antibiotic testing was performed to analyze the antibiotic sensitivi-ties of E. faecium strains to 15 common antibiotics. PCR analysis was used to detect the virulence genes car-ried by the E. faecium strains. Multilocus sequence typing ( MLST) was performed for the typing of E. faeci-um strains. Results Forty-seven E. faecium strains were isolated from 120 stool samples collected from chil-dren under 3 years old in Sui county, Henan province, of which 95. 7% were antibiotic-resistant strains. Most of the isolated E. faecium strains were resistant to rifampicin, accounting for 91. 5% (43/47) of all isolates, followed by those resistant to erythromycin and tetracycline, which accounted for 68. 1% (32/47). Moreover, high resistance rates to those antibiotics commonly used in clinical treatments of E. faecium infec-tion including β-lactam and aminoglycosides antibiotics were observed. Those strains resistant to more than three kinds of antibiotics belonged to the same clonal complex including 12 strains of clonal complex 17 ( CC17) harboring the virulence gene of hyl. All of the isolated E. faecium strains were susceptible to vanco-mycin, linezolid, chloromycetin and nitrofurantoin. Conclusion The E. faecium strains isolated from chil-dren under 3 years old in Sui county, Henan province were multi-antibiotic resistant. There were drug-resist-ance strains belonging to the CC17 and carrying the virulence gene of hyl.