You are here:
OCCURRENCE OF ANTIBIOTIC-RESISTANT UROPATHOGENIC ESCHERICHIA COLI CLONAL GROUP A IN WASTEWATER EFFLUENTS
Citation:
BOCZEK, L. A., E. W. RICE, B. JOHNSTON, AND J. R. JOHNSON. OCCURRENCE OF ANTIBIOTIC-RESISTANT UROPATHOGENIC ESCHERICHIA COLI CLONAL GROUP A IN WASTEWATER EFFLUENTS. APPLIED AND ENVIRONMENTAL MICROBIOLOGY. American Society for Microbiology, Washington, DC, 73(13):4180-4184, (2007).
Description:
Isolates of Escherichia coli belonging to clonal group A (CGA), a recently described disseminated cause of drug-resistant urinary tract infections in humans, were present in four of seven sewage effluents collected from geographically dispersed areas of the United States. All 15 CGA isolates (1% of the 1,484 isolates analyzed) exhibited resistance to trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, accounting for 19.5% of the 77 TMP-SMZ-resistant isolates. Antimicrobial resistance patterns, virulence traits, O:H serotypes, and phylogenetic groupings were compared for CGA and selected non-CGA isolates. The CGA isolates exhibited a wider diversity of resistance profiles and somatic antigens than found in most previous characterizations of this clonal group. This is the first report of recovery from outside a human host of E. coli CGA isolates with virulence factor and antibiotic resistance profiles typical of CGA isolates from a human source. The occurrence of “human-type” CGA in wastewater effluents demonstrates a potential mode for the dissemination of this clonal group in the environment, with possible secondary transmission to new human or animal hosts.