AUTHOR=Gonçalves Daniela , Cecílio Pedro , Faustino Alberta , Iglesias Carmen , Branca Fernando , Estrada Alexandra , Ferreira Helena 

TITLE=Intra- and Extra-Hospital Dissemination of IMP-22-Producing Klebsiella pneumoniae in Northern Portugal: The Breach of the Hospital Frontier Toward the Community

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Microbiology

VOLUME=12

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2021.777054

DOI=10.3389/fmicb.2021.777054

ISSN=1664-302X

ABSTRACT=<p>The emergence of infections (and colonization) with <italic>Enterobacteriaceae-</italic>producing carbapenemases is a threatening public health problem. In the last decades, we watched an isolated case becoming a brutal outbreak, a sporadic description becoming an endemic problem. The present study aims to highlight the dissemination of IMP-22-producing <italic>Klebsiella pneumoniae</italic> in the North of Portugal, through the phenotypic and genotypic characterization of isolates collected from hospitalized patients (<italic>n</italic>=5) and out-patients of the emergency ward of the same acute care hospital (<italic>n</italic>=2), and isolates responsible for the intestinal colonization of residents in a Long-Term Care Facility (<italic>n</italic>=4). Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) results, associated with conjugation experiments pointed to a pattern of both vertical and horizontal dissemination. Overall, and complementing other studies that give relevance to IMP-22-producing <italic>K. pneumoniae</italic> in the clinical settings, here we show for the first time the public health threatening breach of the hospital frontier of this resistance threat, toward the community.</p>