The increased resistance of bacterial pathogens to clinicallyuseful antibiotics has become a serious public health threat world-wide leading to escalating cost of medical treatment. In India, high speed of acquisition of resistance in bacteria has been reported in various parts of the country.

Molecular Characterization of Bacterial Multi-Drug Resistance gene in clinical isolates of Klebsiellapneumoniae and identification of plant based antimicrobials

(Funded by CSIR to Dr. Rama Vaidyanthan and C.Kamatchi)

Our Research focuses on identifying prevalent mechanisms of bacterial resistance to Beta-lactam and quinolone antibiotics in Klebsiellapneumoniae.Klebsiellapneumoniae, an important nosocomial pathogen, causes a wide range of infections including pneumonia, bacteremia, urinary tract infection, and life-threatening septic shock.

Our results have demonstrated the prevalence of antibiotic resistant patterns, especially to beta-lactamase antibiotics. The isolates are not controlled by commonly used inhibitors such as clavulanic acid. The distribition of Class A beta-lactamase genes TEM, SHV, CTX-M and a class D beta lactamase gene OXA – 1 was found to be heterogenous. The plasmids in the resistant isolates had predominantly an IncFIA and IncFIC replicons. Further studying the resistance to quinolone antibiotics we find that 50% of the isolates are also quinolone resistant. This resistance is mediated by plasmid borne genes such as qnrA, qnrB and a variant aac-1b-cr.