Drug-resistant Klebsiella

Klebsiella pneumoniae (Kp) Gram-negative bacteria cause nosocomial infections and rapidly acquire antimicrobial resistance (AMR), which makes it a global threat to human health. It also has a comparatively rare hypervirulent phenotype that can lead to severe disease in otherwise healthy individuals. In recent work by Anton et al., involving 13k publicly available sequenced Kp isolates and 2k hypervirulent strains, we analyzed the plasmid replicons and carbapenemase and siderophore encoding genes to understand the movement of hypervirulence and AMR genes located on plasmids. The large-scale analysis reveals outbreaks and movement of hypervirulent strains, including in China.