Evaluation of the survival of carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates

• Autor(a) principal: Magalhães, João Diogo Rodrigues
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/36527
• topic: Klebsiella pneumoniae; Carbapenems; Probiotics; Chlorhexidine

Klebsiella pneumoniae is an opportunistic pathogenic bacterium with great clinical relevance due to its high frequency and diversity of antibiotic resistance genes. Members of this species have been reported to have resistance to broad-spectrum β-lactams commonly used to treat infections caused by this species, thus posing a risk to human health. Chlorhexidine is a disinfectant used in various products such as mouthwashes and clinical antiseptics which, due to its high use, can lead to the acquisition not only of resistance to this disinfectant but also to colistin, a last-resort antibiotic. Thus, it is important to find alternatives to reduce the acquisition of resistance genes. As such, probiotic bacteria can positively contribute to this problem as some have antimicrobial capabilities. The objective of this work is to evaluate the survival of two carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates and compare their behavior in Ringer's solution, in the presence of chlorhexidine and probiotic bacteria. For this, cultivable and non-culturable methods, such as qPCR, were used to study the behavior of the isolates. It was observed that in Ringer's solution the clinical isolate showed greater resilience while in the presence of chlorhexidine and probiotic bacteria it was the environmental isolate that showed greater resilience.