Survey of prevalence and determination of antibiotic susceptibility pattern of Klebsiella oxytoca strains isolated from inpatient and outpatient patients

Klebsiella oxytoca is an opportunistic pathogen which damages intestinal epithelium through producing cytotoxin. Cytotoxin is one of the important pathogenic factors, which plays a role in the virulence of this bacterium. The aim of this study was to survey of prevalence and determination of antibiotic susceptibility pattern of Klebsiella oxytoca strains isolated from inpatient and outpatient patients.
In this analytical-descriptive study, a total of 75 isolates of K. oxytoca were isolated from various clinical samples (urine, stool, blood, wound and respiratory secretions), and after performing standard microbiological tests and using PCR method they were verified as K. oxytoca. Susceptibility testing of isolates was performed by disc diffusion method according to criteria recommended by the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI).
Of all the 75 isolates, seven K. oxytoca strains isolated from the stool cultures, eleven strains isolated from the blood cultures, two strains isolated from the wound cultures, and fifty-one strains isolated from the urine cultures and four K. oxytoca strains isolated from the respiratory secretions. Antibiotic susceptibility test results showed the highest and lowest resistance was related to ticarcillin (81.3%), meropenem and imipenem (1.3%) respectively. A multi-drug resistant strain was isolated from the urine of a hospitalized woman.
In Conclusion, the results of this study showed that the isolation and identification of K. oxytoca strains is important and determination of the antibiotic susceptibility pattern of these isolates is necessary in order to prevent the increase of antibiotic resistance and the emergence of multi drug resistance strains of K. oxytoca.