Epidemic of carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae in Europe is driven by nosocomial spread

Abstract

EuSCAPE Working Group: Portugal - Manuela Caniça, Vera ManageiroPublic health interventions to control the current epidemic of carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae rely on a comprehensive understanding of its emergence and spread over a wide range of geographical scales. We analysed the genome sequences and epidemiological data of >1,700 K. pneumoniae samples isolated from patients in 244 hospitals in 32 countries during the European Survey of Carbapenemase-Producing Enterobacteriaceae. We demonstrate that carbapenemase acquisition is the main cause of carbapenem resistance and that it occurred across diverse phylogenetic backgrounds. However, 477 of 682 (69.9%) carbapenemase-positive isolates are concentrated in four clonal lineages, sequence types 11, 15, 101, 258/512 and their derivatives. Combined analysis of the genetic and geographic distances between isolates with different β-lactam resistance determinants suggests that the propensity of K. pneumoniae to spread in hospital environments correlates with the degree of resistance and that carbapenemase-positive isolates have the highest transmissibility. Indeed, we found that over half of the hospitals that contributed carbapenemase-positive isolates probably experienced within-hospital transmission, and interhospital spread is far more frequent within, rather than between, countries. Finally, we propose a value of 21 for the number of single nucleotide polymorphisms that optimizes the discrimination of hospital clusters and detail the international spread of the successful epidemic lineage, ST258/512.This work was funded by The Centre for Genomic Pathogen Surveillance, Wellcome Genome Campus, Wellcome (grant nos. 098051 and 099202) and the NIHR Global Health Research Unit on Genomic Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance (NIHR 16/136/111). The EuSCAPE project was funded by ECDC through a specific framework contract (ECDC/2012/055) following an open call for tender (OJ/25/04/2012-PROC/2012/036).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio