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Infections caused by multidrug resistant (MDR) Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates in burn patients restrict therapeutic strategies. The current study aimed to analyze antibiotic resistance genes and multilocus sequence typing (MLST) of P. aeruginosa strains isolated from burn patients in Shahid Motahari hospital in Tehran, Iran. Altogether 63 P. aeruginosa isolates were characterized in this study. Antibiotic susceptibility testing was performed by disc diffusion method. PCR was performed to determine the frequency of resistance genes. The expression rates of mexB , mexY genes were evaluated by Real-Time PCR. Genotyping of isolates was performed by MLST analysis. All isolates were MDR in this study. The highest resistance was detected against gentamicin, tobramycin, and cefoxitin (100%), while all isolates were susceptible to colistin. Altogether 14 resistance profiles were determined, and profile 1 included more than 50% of the isolates with the highest resistance. In this study bla ampC, bla VIM-2, bla OXA-10, and aac(6′)-Ib resistance genes were detected in all isolates. The expression levels of mexB and mexY genes were upregulated in 66.6 and 88.8% of MDR isolates, respectively. Overexpression of both genes was detected in 55.5% of the isolates. MLST analysis revealed five sequence types (STs), including ST235, ST664, ST532, ST2637, and ST230, which showed a significant relationship with antibiotic resistance profiles. The present study indicates an increase in antibiotic resistance against different antibiotic families among P. aeruginosa isolates. We describe the circulation of globally distributed STs among hospitalized patients, and we report ST235 as the most common MDR clone in our study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluate the antibacterial and antibiofilm activity of recombinant Azurin from Pseudomonas aeruginosa against different bacterial species. Materials and Methods: The azurin gene was cloned in the pET21a vector. The pET21a-azurin construct was transformed into Escherichia coli BL21. The recombinant Azurin was expressed and purified using affinity chromatography and confirmed by Western blotting. The cytotoxicity of rAzurin was assessed on peripheral blood mononuclear cells. Antibacterial and antibiofilm activity of rAzurin with different concentrations were determined by micro-broth dilution and crystal violet methods, respectively. The effect of rAzurin on bacterial species was statistically analyzed by t-test and spearman correlation. Results: The identity of purified protein was confirmed by blotting and distinguished as a 14 kDa band on 15% SDS-PAGE. The IC50 of rAzurin on Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cell (PBMC) was determined as 377.91±0.5 μg/mL in 24 h. Vibrio cholerae and Campilobacter jejuni displayed the most sensitivity to rAzurin (27.5 and 55 μg/mL, respectively) and the highest resistance (220 μg/mL) was displayed by P. aeruginosa and E. coli. The MIC for other species was 110 μg/mL. The Minimum Biofilm Inhibition Concentration (MBIC) was determined as 220 μg/mL for Salmonella enterica and V. cholerae, 300 μg/mL for Shigella sonnei, Shigella flexneri and P. aeruginosa and 440 μg/mL for the other species. The antimicrobial effect of rAzurin on bacterial species were significant (p value<0.05) and correlation coefficient was negative. Conclusion: The rAzurin appears to be an appropriate choice and a new strategy for prevention of bacterial infection. It inhibits bacterial growth and biofilm formation and candidates as antimicrobial peptides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to investigate the presence of TCP gene clusters among clinical and environmental Vibrio cholerae isolates and to explore the genetic relatedness of isolates using ribotyping technique. A total of 50 V. cholerae strains (30 clinical and 20 environmental) were included in this study. Three clinical isolates were negative for TCP cluster genes while the cluster was absent in all of the environmental strains. Ribotyping of rRNA genes with BglI produced 18 different ribotype patterns, three of which belonged to clinical O1 serotype isolates. The remaining 15 ribotypes belonged to clinical non-O1, non-O139 serogroups (two patterns) and environmental non-O1, non-O139 serogroups (13 patterns). Clinical V. cholerae O1 strains from 2004 through 2006 and several environmental non-O1, non-O139 V. cholerae strains from 2006 showed 67.3 % similarity and fell within one single gene cluster. Ribotyping analysis made it possible to further comprehend the close originality of clinical isolates as very little changes have been occurred within rRNA genes of different genotypes of V. cholerae strains through years. In conclusion, ribotyping analysis of environmental V. cholerae isolates showed a substantial genomic diversity supporting the fact that genetic changes within bacterial genome occurs during years in the environment, while only little changes may arise within the genome of clinical isolates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]