Diversity of Sequence Types and Impact of Fitness Cost among Carbapenem-Resistant Acinetobacter baumannii Isolates from Tripoli, Libya

Antoine G Abou Fayad; Louis-Patrick Haraoui; Ahmad Sleiman; Mohamad Jaafar; Abdulaziz Zorgani; Ghassan M Matar; Paul G Higgins

doi:10.1128/AAC.00277-21

Diversity of Sequence Types and Impact of Fitness Cost among Carbapenem-Resistant Acinetobacter baumannii Isolates from Tripoli, Libya

Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2021 Jul 16;65(8):e0027721. doi: 10.1128/AAC.00277-21. Epub 2021 Jul 16.

Authors

Antoine G Abou Fayad^#^{1

2

3}, Louis-Patrick Haraoui^#⁴, Ahmad Sleiman^{1

2

3}, Mohamad Jaafar^{1

2

3}, Abdulaziz Zorgani⁵, Ghassan M Matar^{1

2

3}, Paul G Higgins^{6

7}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Experimental Pathology, Immunology and Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon.
² Center for Infectious Diseases Research, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon.
³ World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Center for Reference and Research on Bacterial Pathogens, Beirut, Lebanon.
⁴ Department of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada.
⁵ National Center for Disease Control Libya, Reference Laboratory, Tripoli, Libya.
⁶ Institute for Medical Microbiology, Immunology and Hygiene, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
⁷ German Centre for Infection Research (DZIF), Partner Site Bonn-Cologne, Cologne, Germany.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

We investigated the molecular epidemiology of 21 carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii isolates from Libya and assessed their relative fitness. Core genome multilocus sequence typing (MLST) revealed five interhospital transmission clusters. Three clusters were associated with the international clones (IC) IC1, IC2, and IC7. Carbapenem-resistance was associated with bla_OXA-23, bla_GES-11, or bla_NDM-1. Compared to that of A. baumannii DSM 30008, the doubling time was similar over 10 h, but after 16 h, half the isolates grew to higher densities, suggesting a fitness advantage.

Keywords: Acinetobacter baumannii; antimicrobial resistance; carbapenems; fitness cost.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Acinetobacter Infections* / drug therapy
Acinetobacter Infections* / epidemiology
Acinetobacter baumannii* / genetics
Anti-Bacterial Agents / pharmacology
Bacterial Proteins / genetics
Carbapenems / pharmacology
Humans
Libya / epidemiology
Microbial Sensitivity Tests
Multilocus Sequence Typing
beta-Lactamases / genetics

Substances

Anti-Bacterial Agents
Bacterial Proteins
Carbapenems
beta-Lactamases