Molecular Analysis of Klebsiella Pneumoniae Isolated from UTI Patients in Erbil City

Fifty isolates of Klebsiella pneumoniae were identified using cultural, morphological and biochemical characteristics. Three-hundred and fifty urine samples were collected from patients with urinary tract infection admitted to Hawler Teaching, Rizgary, Raparin and West Emergency hospitals in Erbil city during the period of 2nd of June to 5th of October 2012.       Antibiotic sensitivity testing performed for all isolates using amikacin (AK30), ampicillin (AMP10), aztreonam (ATM30), Cefixime (CFM5), Ceftriaxone (CI30), Ciprofloxacin (CIP30), Cefoxitin (CN30), Trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole (COT25), Cefotaxime (CTX5), Gentamicin (GEN10), Imipenem (IPM10), Nalidixic acid (NA30), Nitrofurantoin (NIT300), Norfloxacin (NOR10) and Trimethoprim (TMP5). The resistance percentage of the isolates were (8, 100, 64, 52, 60, 20, 86, 50, 60, 34, 0, 24, 58, 24 and 60) %, respectively. Plasmid profiling was done for all isolates and it was revealed that 48% contained one plasmid, 44% possessed two plasmids, 6% had three plasmids and 2% of the isolates contained four plasmids. The process of transformation was done for the laboratory strain Escherichia coli DH5α by using purified plasmid of the most resistant isolate (K50) to determine the location of the genes which are responsible for resistance to antibiotics in that isolate. The transformed colonies appear to be resistant to the following antibiotics (AMP10, CFM5 and CTX5) which indicated that the genes encoding resistance to these antibiotics were located on transferrable plasmid.