Background & Aims: The production of extended-spectrum-β-lactamases (ESBLs) is the main mechanism of resistance to β-lactam antibiotics. The outbreak of isolates simultaneously possessing several resistance mechanisms to β-lactam antibiotics caused a decrease in sensitivity of the confirmatory tests for ESBL. The aim of this study was the evaluation of the β-lactamase disk test method in the de...

CFE-1 is a unique plasmid-encoded AmpC β-lactamase with the regulator gene ampR. It imparts high resistance to most cephalosporins with constitutive high-level β-lactamase activity. Here, the β-lactamase activities and expression levels of ampC with or without ampR were investigated. Results suggested that the resistance of CFE-1 to cephalosporins is caused by a substitution in AmpR, in which t...

Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are among the most common diagnosed in clinical practice. Treatment is often initiated before microbiological confirmation and anti-microbial susceptibility testing. With rapidly rising antibiotic resistance treatment failures not uncommon. Beta-lactamase production by gram-negative bacteria causing UTI commonest mode of drug resistance. The aim current study was...

BACKGROUND The extensive use of the β-lactam antibiotics in hospitals and in the community has created major resistance problems which has led to increased morbidity, mortality and healthcare costs. The use of the β-lactamase inhibitors in combination with the β-lactam antibiotics is currently the most successful strategy used for circumventing the resistance mechanisms. OBJECTIVE To evaluate...

β-lactamases are bacterial enzymes that confer resistance to β-lactam antibiotics, such as penicillins and cephalosporins. There are four classes of β-lactamase enzymes, each with characteristic sequence and structure properties. Enzymes from class A are the most common and have been well characterized across the family; however, less is known about how physicochemical properties vary across th...

BACKGROUND Carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (CRAb) is a major source of nosocomial infections in Spain associated with the production of OXA-58-like or OXA-24/40-like β-lactamase enzymes. We analysed the plasmids carrying the bla(OXA-24/40)-like gene in CRAb isolates obtained a decade apart. METHODS The presence of β-lactamases was screened for by PCR (metallo-β-lactamases, carbap...

The Gram-positive bacterium B. cereus produces both -lactamase I, a class A serine enzyme, and -lactamase II, a zinc dependent enzyme of class B. Crystallographic studies of these two enzymes have shown that -lactamase I is homologous with the penicillin-sensitive D-alaD-ala carboxypeptidase-transpeptidase of Streptomyces R61 while -lactamase II has a hitherto unknown structure. New methods of ...

Background: Community-acquired infections by multidrug-resistant (MDR), extended-spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL) producing Klebsiella species (Klebsiella spp.) is of major concern worldwide. Antibiotic resistance, production of extended-spectrum β-lactamases (ESBLs), and carbapenemases, as well as the presence of classes 1, 2, and 3 integrons in outpatient isolates of Klebsiella collected from Yazd...

We characterized 12 clinical isolates of Klebsiella oxytoca with the extended-spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL) phenotype (high minimum inhibitory concentration [MIC] values of ceftriaxone) recovered over 9 months at a university hospital in Japan. To determine the clonality of the isolates, we used pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), multi-locus sequence typing (MLST), and PCR analyses to detec...