Literature regarding multidrug resistant (MDR) carbapenemase-producing Escherichia coli (CPE) recovered from food-producing animals is lacking from Pakistan. Here, we report on the isolation and characterization of MDR-CPE recovered from retail-poultry meat in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pakistan. A total of 101 retail poultry-meat samples were screened for Escherichia coli and tested against 17 different antibiotics through disc diffusion test to define MDRs. MDR isolates were genotyped by PCR for carbapenemase-encoding elements. Finally, integron typing, insertion sequence common region 1 (ISCR1) and its association with carbapenemase-encoding genes was established through PCR. Of the 33 E. coli isolates, 28 (Phylo- group B2=39.2% (11/28), A=32.1 % (9/28) and group D=28.5% (8/28) were MDR displaying resistance to cefotaxime, tetracycline, ampicillin and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, while, 96.4, 92.8, 89.2 and 85.7% were also found resistant to colistin-sulphate, enrofloxacin, doxycycline and ciprofloxacin, respectively. The bla_VIM was predominantly identified in 8 (28.5%) isolates followed by bla_NDM 4/28 (14.2%) and 2 isolates were carrying a combination of bla_VIM+bla_NDM. Class-1 integron was detected in 21 (75%), class-2 and class-3 integrons were detected in 25% and 7.1%, respectively. ISCR1 element was identified among 11 isolates (39.28%) that was found associated with bla_VIM gene among 3 isolates (27.25%) suggesting involvement in its mobilization. We report the incidence of E. coli carrying carbapenemase-encoding genes located on the plasmids carrying integron 1 recovered from retail-poultry-meat in Mardan, Pakistan.

To Cite This Article: Younas M, ur Rahman S, Shams S, Salman MM and Khan I, 2019. Multidrug resistant carbapenemase-producing Escherichia coli from chicken meat reveals diversity and co-existence of carbapenemase encoding genes. Pak Vet J, 39(2): 241-245. http://dx.doi.org/10.29261/pakvetj/2019.047