ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Cell. Infect. Microbiol.
Sec. Molecular Bacterial Pathogenesis
Volume 15 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2025.1679043
This article is part of the Research TopicCarbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae: Microbiome Influence and Infectious Disease DynamicsView all 4 articles
Clonal Dissemination of Carbapenem-Resistant ST477 Klebsiella michiganensis Co-Producing NDM-1, SFO-1, and VEB-3 in a Chinese Hospital
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Laboratory Medicine, China-Japan Union Hospital, Jilin University, Changchun, China
- 2Medical Laboratory Center, JiLin Provincial People's Hospital, Changchun, China
- 3Fudan University Huashan Hospital Institute of Antibiotics, Shanghai, China
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Objectives:To investigate the antimicrobial resistance mechanisms and intra-hospital clonal dissemination of carbapenem-resistant ST477 Klebsiella michiganensis. Methods:Between 14 December 2019 and 23 August 2020, six K. michiganensis isolates producing NDM-type carbapenemases were recovered from Jilin Provincial People's Hospital in China. Antimicrobial susceptibility was determined using the broth microdilution method. Whole-genome sequencing (WGS) was performed for all isolates. Sequence typing (ST), resistance genes, and plasmid types were identified using the PubMLST, ResFinder, and PlasmidFinder databases, respectively. Conjugation experiments were conducted to assess plasmid transferability. Additionally, 344 publicly available K. michiganensis genomes were retrieved and used to construct a phylogenetic tree based on core-genome single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Results:WGS revealed that all six isolates belonged to ST477 and harboured blaNDM-1, blaSFO-1, and blaVEB-3. The maximum pairwise difference among the six isolates was only 8 SNPs, indicating clonal transmission. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing showed high-level resistance to imipenem, meropenem, and ceftazidime-avibactam, while susceptibility was retained to amikacin, aztreonam-avibactam, eravacycline, tigecycline, and colistin. Conjugation assays confirmed that the blaNDM-1-carrying plasmid was self-transmissible. Clinical data showed that four of the six patients had a history of transfer to the intensive care unit (ICU). Phylogenetic analysis combined with resistance gene profiling based on publicly available genomes revealed that 50% (175/350) of K. michiganensis isolates from human hosts carried carbapenem resistance genes. Notably, Isolates from China exhibited a higher carriage rate of carbapenemase genes (76.1%, 51/67). No ST477-related genomes were identified in current public datasets. Conclusions: This study is the first to report the clonal dissemination of ST477 K. michiganensis harbouring blaNDM-1 in a Chinese hospital.
Keywords: Klebsiella michiganensis, Carbapenem resistance, Clonal dissemination, BlaNDM-1, WGS
Received: 04 Aug 2025; Accepted: 06 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Yan, Jiao, Jiang, Wang, Wei, Hu and Xu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Hao Liu, haoliu23@mails.jlu.edu.cn
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