Phenotypic and Genomic Characterization of AmpC-Producing Klebsiella pneumoniae From Korea

The prevalence of multidrug-resistant gram-negative bacteria has continuously increased over the past few years; bacterial strains producing AmpC β-lactamases and/or extended-spectrum β-lactamases (ESBLs) are of particular concern. We combined high-resolution whole genome sequencing and phenotypic data to elucidate the mechanisms of resistance to cephamycin and β-lactamase in Korean Klebsiella pneumoniae strains, in which no AmpC-encoding genes were detected by PCR. We identified several genes that alone or in combination can potentially explain the resistance phenotype. We showed that different mechanisms could explain the resistance phenotype, emphasizing the limitations of the PCR and the importance of distinguishing closely-related gene variants.

Rapid Clinical Bacteriology and Its Future Impact

Clinical microbiology has always been a slowly evolving and conservative science. The sub-field of bacteriology has been and still is dominated for over a century by culture-based technologies. The integration of serological and molecular methodologies during the seventies and eighties of the previous century took place relatively slowly and in a cumbersome fashion. When nucleic acid amplification technologies became available in the early nineties, the predicted "revolution" was again slow but in the end a real paradigm shift did take place. Several of the culture-based technologies were successfully replaced by tests aimed at nucleic acid detection. More recently a second revolution occurred. Mass spectrometry was introduced and broadly accepted as a new diagnostic gold standard for microbial species identification. Apparently, the diagnostic landscape is changing, albeit slowly, and the combination of newly identified infectious etiologies and the availability of innovative technologies has now opened new avenues for modernizing clinical microbiology. However, the improvement of microbial antibiotic susceptibility testing is still lagging behind. In this review we aim to sketch the most recent developments in laboratory-based clinical bacteriology and to provide an overview of emerging novel diagnostic approaches.