Molecular Detection of virulence genes (rmpA2 , iuc & iroB) of hypervirulent Klebsiella pneumoniae in clinical Isolates from patients in Khartoum State, Sudan

Background: Klebsiella pneumoniae pathogens cause infection in immune -compromised patients and healthy
individuals. Iron acquisition systems and regulator mucoid phenotype play an
important role in the pathogenesis and virulence of Klebsiella pneumoniae. this study was aimed to investigate the
prevalence of virulence genes iuc, iroB and rmpA2 of hyper virulent Klebsiella
pneumoniae (hykp) in
clinical Isolates from patients in Khartoum. This was a descriptive
cross-sectional study.

Methods: A total of 95 Klebsiella
pneumoniae isolates were collected from different Hospitals in Khartoum
state, these isolates were screened for hyper mucoviscosity phenotypically by string test. Antibiotic susceptibility
tests were performed for all isolates to identify their resistance pattern, iuc, rmpA2,
iroB genes were investigated by
polymerase chain reaction.

Results: The frequency of iuc, iroB, rmpA2 were 74.7%, 57.9%, 2.1%
respectively among the clinical isolates. String tests were positive among 30 isolates and the remaining
65 isolates gave negative results. Antibacterial susceptibility test showed that
all isolates were resistant to Ceftriaxone 100%, 5 isolates 5.3% were resistant to Colistin, 36 isolates
(37.9%) were Meropenem resistant and 64 isolates (67.4%) were Piperacillin
tazobactam resistant.

Conclusions: There was a high prevalence of iuC virulence gene of hvkp, high
frequency Iron acquisition systems coding gene iuC gene, iroB gene
compared to regulator mucoid phenotype A2 (rmpA2 gene) among clinical isolates.