Molecular and phenotypic profiles of carbapenem- and third-generation cephalosporin-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates from the fecal microbiota of pediatric patients with COVID-19

Description

Mahmoud A F Khalil leads an eight-author study of drug-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae hiding in the guts of children hospitalised with COVID-19 at a tertiary hospital in Fayoum, Egypt. Gut carriage of such bacteria raises the risk of later infections elsewhere in the body, and pandemic antibiotic use fanned resistance. Stool from seventy-one young patients was cultured on selective media, and isolates faced drug panels, resistance gene hunting, and biofilm tests.

Half the children carried the bacterium, and every isolate was resistant: twenty-two shrugged off carbapenems, the last-line drugs, and fourteen produced broad-spectrum beta-lactam destroying enzymes. Two carbapenemase genes split the resistant group almost evenly. All isolates still answered to colistin, and biofilm formation was common in both groups. The authors call for routine carriage screening, tighter antibiotic stewardship, and stronger infection control in children's hospitals.

Catalog record

Source: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/PMC13393905