Metronidazole (MNZ) is administered as first-line antibiotic for Helicobacter pylori eradication therapy; however, increasing resistance to MNZ impaired the efficacy. Increasing the dose of MNZ was recommended to overcome low-level resistance, but it was difficult to determine MNZ resistance level simply based on the rdxA gene mutation. In this study, the rdxA sequences of 511 clinical H. pylori strains were analyzed to assess the genotypes associated with MNZ resistance. We observed that the prevalences of rdxA sequences with missense, nonsense, and frameshift mutations were 70.25, 11.35, and 17.03%, respectively. Regarding the amino acid substitutions, T31E, H53R, D59N, L62V, S88P, G98S/N, R131K, and V172I were present in most strains regardless of the resistance phenotype. The correlation analysis showed R16H/C, Y47C, A67V/T, and V204I substitutions were associated with MNZ resistance. The mutation resulting in RdxA truncation was observed in 36.29% of the resistant strains, and 83.45% of these strains displayed high-level MNZ resistance (MIC > 256 μg/mL). Moreover, all strains with truncated mutation positions before amino acid 70 expressed high-level MNZ resistance. Our results indicated that most amino acid mutations probably contributed to the sequence diversity of RdxA, while R16H/C, Y47C, A67V/T, and V204I were potentially helpful to identify resistant strains. Although it was difficult to determine the mutations associated with MNZ resistance, the prediction of high-level resistance based on truncated characteristics of RdxA might be an important approach, which can effectively avoid H. pylori eradication therapy with unreasonable of MNZ dose increases for patients with high-level drug resistance. IMPORTANCE The increasing resistance to metronidazole impaired the efficacy of Helicobacter pylori eradication, and increasing the dose of metronidazole was recommended to overcome low-level resistance. For patients infected with highly resistant strains, the current empirical treatments, which generally used metronidazole in double doses or more, appeared impossibly to overcome the resistance and would only increase the incidence of adverse effects. Our results indicated that high-level metronidazole resistance was predominant, and almost half of the patients with high-level drug resistance could avoid usage of metronidazole based on the truncated mutations of RdxA sequences, which can effectively avoid H. pylori eradication therapy with unreasonable increases in the metronidazole dose.
Keywords: Helicobacter pylori; MIC; RdxA; metronidazole.