Increasing imipenem resistance and dissemination of the ISAba1-associated blaOXA-23 gene among Acinetobacter baumannii isolates in an intensive care unit

The antibiotic susceptibility of Acinetobacter calcoaceticus–Acinetobacter baumannii complex strains recovered from the intensive care unit (ICU) of West China Hospital, Sichuan, PR China, from 2006 to 2009 was investigated. The identification of A. baumannii and analysis of carbapenemase-encoding genes and their relationship with ISAba1 were performed by PCR. Furthermore, a DiversiLab repetitive extragenic palindromic sequence-based PCR (rep-PCR) microbial typing system and a multilocus sequence typing (MLST) scheme were applied to assess the genetic relationship of the isolates. The results showed that the antibiotic susceptibility of the A. calcoaceticus–A. baumannii complex isolates changed and imipenem resistance increased rapidly between 2006 and 2009. The bla OXA-51-like and ISAba1-associated bla OXA-23 genes were prevalent in the imipenem-resistant A. baumannii isolates. However, the bla OXA-58-like gene was found in only one isolate and no metallo-β-lactamase genes were detected. The representative multidrug-resistant A. baumannii isolates were identified as one cluster by rep-PCR fingerprinting and belonged to the clonal complex 92 (CC92) according to MLST. These findings indicate a situation of increasing resistance and wide distribution of class D β-lactamase genes, especially the acquired ISAba1-associated bla OXA-23 gene, in A. baumannii isolates in the ICU of West China Hospital, probably caused by expansion of the CC92 clone.