Molecular Detection of the Arr-2 Gene in Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae Resistant to Rifampicin in Abidjan, Côte D'Ivoire

Aims: The aim of this study was to demonstrate the presence of rifampicin resistance arr-2 gene in certain enterobacteria of clinical origin from various biological products.

Place and Duration of Study: National Reference Center for Antibiotics of Pasteur Institute of Côte d'Ivoire, and research unit on emerging tropical infectious diseases of Aix-Marseille University, between January to July 2017.

Methodology: The strains were isolated from different biological samples and identified by biochemical tests and MALDI-TOF MS mass spectrometry. The Antibiotic susceptibility testing was performed by diffusion on Mueller- Hinton (MH) agar.

Results: All strains were resistant to rifampicin (100%) and amoxicillin (100%), but sensitive to imipenem and colistin. Conventional PCR using specific primers detected the arr-2 gene in four strains, including 3 strains of Klebsiella pneumoniae and one strain of Escherichia coli. Molecular typing of the strains by MLST showed that the E. coli strain had ST 5 and the three strains of K. pneumoniae had ST 307, ST 309, ST 273 respectively.

Conclusion: This article is the first report that highlights the presence of the arr-2 gene in enterobacteria in Côte d’Ivoire.