•  
  •  
 

Abstract

Kocuria spp. isolates were collected from different clinical samples from Medical City Educational Laboratories/ Baghdad and Ain Shams Specialized Hospital, Cairo. Identification was carried out by VITEK2 automated compact system. Antibiotic susceptibility, biofilm formation, and detection of macrolides resistance genes ermA, ermB, ermC, msrA & mef, integron intI1 and intI2 were also investigated. Results indicated that 60 isolates were collected from the two countries, 42 isolates from Iraq, and 18 isolates from Egypt. The bacterial isolates were identified by their morphological and biochemical characteristics. They were susceptible to pipracillin/Tazobactam and vancomycin, resistant to erythromycin, azithromycin and ofloxacin. Kocuria spp. had different potential to form biofilm, Kocuria kristinae were strong biofilm producers, while Kocuria rhizophila varied between non-biofilm producers in isolates from Iraq and weak producers in isolates from Egypt. The detection of macrolide resistance genes indicated that the mef gene was present in 7.14% of isolates from Iraq, while the ermA gene was detected in 6.66% of isolates from Egypt. Integron detection showed that intI1 was present in isolates from both Iraq and Egypt, whereas intI2 was detected in Iraq isolates only. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comparative study conducted to investigate the presence of Kocuria spp. in Iraq and Egypt. The study highlights the importance of Kocuria spp. which is considered an opportunistic pathogens, however, it is responsible for different human infections.

Keywords

Antibiotics susceptibility, Biofilm formation, Kocuria spp, Macrolides resistance genes, multidrug resistance bacteria

Subject Area

Biology

Article Type

Article

First Page

1560

Last Page

1567

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Download

Share

COinS