First report of Escherichia coli producing extended-spectrum Beta-lactamases (ESBL) from camels in Canary Islands.

Abstract

Antimicrobial resistance is a serious public health problem worldwide. Data on the occurrence of multidrug resistant Escherichia coli in camels are lacking. The aim of this work was to determine the carriage rate of ESBL-producing E. coli as well as their genetic lineages in camels from Fuerteventura and Gran Canaria (Canary Islands), in Spain. Faecal samples were recovered from 58 apparently healthy camels from Gran Canaria (n=32) and Fuerteventura (n=26) during July 2019. They were seeded on MacConkey agar no supplemented (MC) and supplemented (MC+CTX) with cefotaxime (2μg/ml) for E. coli recovery. Antimicrobial susceptibility was performed by disk-diffusion test (CLSI, 2018). The presence of blaCTX-M (different groups), blaSHV, blaTEM, blaKPC, blaOXA-1 and blaOXA-48 genes, as well as mcr-1 (colistin resistance), tetA/tetB (tetracycline resistance) and int1 gene (integrase of class 1 integrons), was tested by PCR/sequencing. Furthermore, phylogenetic groups and MLST were determined by specific-PCR and sequencing. E. coli strains were isolated from all the 58 camels (100%): 8 recovered from MC+CTX and 58 from MC. Most of them were resistant to one or two antibiotics, so we had focused our research in the 5 multidrug resistant E. coli isolates. ESBL producing-E. coli were detected in 2 camels samples (4% of the total animals tested) with the same resistant genotype: blaCTX-M-15, blaTEM-1, tetA, tetB, int1. ESBL-positive isolates were both ascribed to phylogenetic group A and to the sequence type ST3018, while the ESBL negative isolates were phylogroup B1 (3 isolates). To our knowledge, this is the first report related to E. coli in camels from Canary Islands. Camels can be a source of ESBL genes, containing the widespread blaCTX-M-15 gene in isolates of lineage ST3018-A. Due to the participation of camels in touristic activities in the region, the potential transference of ESBL-positive bacteria between humans and animals could easily happened and should be further monitored