JAC Advance Access originally published online on December 1, 2004
Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy 2005 55(1):123-126; doi:10.1093/jac/dkh491
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JAC vol.55 no.1 © The British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy 2004; all rights reserved
Distribution of streptogramin resistance determinants among Enterococcus faecium from a poultry production environment of the USA
1 Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742; 2 Center for Veterinary Medicine, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Laurel, MD 20708; 3 Department of Biological Resources Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA
* Corresponding author. Tel: +1-301-405-5452; Fax: +1-301-314-9489; Email: sj13{at}umail.umd.edu
Objectives: The impact of agricultural use of antimicrobials on the present and future efficacy of therapeutic drugs in human medicine is a growing public concern. Quinupristin/dalfopristin has been approved to treat human disease caused by vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium and is related to virginiamycin, a streptogramin complex that has long been used in USA agriculture poultry production.
Methods: Streptogramin-resistant isolates of E. faecium from poultry production environments on the eastern seaboard were recovered without selection for streptogramin resistance and examined using ribotyping to evaluate clonal bias. Colony PCR screening for the previously described streptogramin resistance determinants erm(A), erm(B), msr(C), vgb(A), vat(D) and vat(E) was performed to determine the prevalence of streptogramin resistance mechanisms from these environments.
Results: The collection of E. faecium isolates was unevenly distributed among 28 ribogroups and did not cluster geographically. The most prevalent ribogroups was composed of isolates that possessed diverse antimicrobial resistance profiles. Of the 127 isolates examined, 63% were resistant to quinupristin/dalfopristin. The resistance determinants erm(A) and erm(B) were observed among 6% and 10%, respectively, of streptogramin-resistant isolates. msr(C) was detected in a single isolate that was resistant to macrolide and lincosamide antimicrobials. The streptogramin B hydrolase vgb(A) and the streptogramin A acetyltransferases genes vat(D) and vat(E) were not detected in any of the E. faecium isolates.
Conclusions: These results indicate that there is widespread resistance to streptogramin antimicrobials among E. faecium throughout the poultry production region in this study and that the mechanisms of resistance to streptogramin antimicrobials within this population remain largely uncharacterized.
Keywords: enterococci , antibiotic resistance , quinupristin/dalfopristin , MLS
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