Identification of Multidrug-Resistant Genes in Acinetobacter baumannii in Sulaimani City-Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq

Acinetobacter baumannii is an opportunistic pathogen responsible for hospital-acquired infections. A. baumannii epidemics described world-wide were caused by few genotypic clusters of strains. The occurrence of epidemics caused by multi-drug resistant strains assigned to novel genotypes have been reported over the last few years. Multiple drug-resistant strains of Acinetobacterhave created therapeutic problems worldwide. This study was conducted to determine the antimicrobial susceptibility patterns of blaOXA-type carbapenemases among isolates of Acinetobacter. Twenty one Acinetobacter isolates were identified at the species level and their susceptibilities to different antibiotics were determined using Vitek 2 system. Resistant percentages for all isolates were recorded; highest resistant rate was against ampicillin (100%) while lowest rate was against imipenem (57.1%). The MICs of imipenem for the resistant isolates were ≥16. All isolates show multi drug resistance to different antibiotics used. The Isolates were then subjected to multiplex-PCR targeting blaOXA genes. All strains of A. baumannii possess a blaOXA-51-like gene. The co-existence of blaOXA-51-like and blaOXA-23-like were detected in 17 strains while in 4 strains blaOXA-51-like was the only presented gene. Detection of blaOXA-51-like can be used as a simple and reliable method to differentiate A. baumannii strains from other species.