ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Infectious Agents and Disease
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1650703
Poor glycemic control and smoking and drinking history rather than bacterial virulence contribute to the development of invasive Klebsiella pneumoniae liver abscess: a case-control study in northeast China
Provisionally accepted
- China Medical University, Shenyang, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
This study aimed to investigate the clinical and microbiological characteristics of invasive and noninvasive Klebsiella pneumoniae liver abscesses (KPLAs) and elucidate the risk factors for invasive KPLA. We conducted a case-control study involving 50 patients with invasive KPLA and 50 patients with noninvasive KPLA from two medical centers between 2019 and 2024. Demographic and clinical data were collected for all patients from the hospital medical records system. Univariate and multivariate analyses were then performed to compare the characteristics of invasive and noninvasive KPLAs. In addition, antimicrobial resistance testing and wholegenome sequencing were performed for 50 K. pneumoniae strains from one medical center. The comparison of patients with invasive and noninvasive KPLAs revealed that diabetes mellitus, smoking history, drinking history, smaller maximum diameter of abscess, neutrophil count, fasting blood glucose, blood urea nitrogen, and length of hospital stay were independent risk factors for invasive KPLA. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that K. pneumoniae strains from patients with invasive and noninvasive KPLAs were intermingled. ST23 with K1 serotype was the predominant sequence type (66.0%), followed by ST65 with K2 serotype. Multilocus sequence types, capsular serotypes, antimicrobial resistance patterns, virulence genes, and SNPs of K. pneumoniae strains isolated from patients with invasive and noninvasive KPLAs showed no significant differences between the two patient groups. Overall, our results indicate that patients' contaminant conditions, such as poor glycemic control, smoking history, and drinking history, rather than bacterial virulence, contribute to the development of invasive KPLA.
Keywords: Liver Abscess, Klebsiella pneumoniae, invasive, Virulence, risk factor, Fasting blood glucose
Received: 23 Jun 2025; Accepted: 11 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Chen, Wang, Wang, Tian, Li, Wang, Chang and Chu. 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:
Fushun Li, China Medical University, Shenyang, China
Ruixuan Wang, China Medical University, Shenyang, China
Zhihui Chang, China Medical University, Shenyang, China
Yunzhuo Chu, China Medical University, Shenyang, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.