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Development of in vitro resistance to fluoroquinolones in Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

ABSTRACT: Fluoroquinolone resistance in Pseudomonas aeruginosa typically arises through site-specific mutations and overexpression of efflux pumps. In this study, we investigated the dynamics of different resistance mechanisms in P. aeruginosa populations that have evolved under fluoroquinolone pressure, as well as the interactions between these mechanisms in evolutionary trajectories. Bacteria of strain ATCC27853 were selected under different concentrations of ciprofloxacin and levofloxacin for six parallel lineages, followed by amplification of four target genes in the quinolone-resistance determining region (QRDR) and Sanger sequencing to identify the mutations. The expression of four efflux pump proteins was evaluated by real-time polymerase chain reaction using the relative quantitation method, with the ATCC27853 strain used as a control. We found that ciprofloxacin killed P. aeruginosa sooner than did levofloxacin. Further, we identified five different mutations in three subunits of QRDRs, with gyrA as the main mutated gene associated with conferring fluoroquinolone resistance. Additionally, we found a larger number of mutations appearing at 2?mg/L and 4?mg/L of ciprofloxacin and levofloxacin, respectively. Moreover, we identified the main efflux pump being expressed as MexCD-OprJ, with initial overexpression observed at 0.25?mg/L and 0.5?mg/L of ciprofloxacin and levofloxacin, respectively. These results demonstrated gyrA83 mutation and MexCD-OprJ overexpression as the primary mechanism conferring ciprofloxacin and levofloxacin resistance in P. aeruginosa. In addition, we also show that ciprofloxacin exhibited a stronger ability to kill the bacteria while potentially rendering it more susceptible to resistance.

SUBMITTER: Zhao L

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7405379 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Development of in vitro resistance to fluoroquinolones in Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

Zhao Lei L Wang Shiqi S Li Xiaobing X He Xiaojing X Jian Lingyan L

Antimicrobial resistance and infection control 20200805 1

Fluoroquinolone resistance in Pseudomonas aeruginosa typically arises through site-specific mutations and overexpression of efflux pumps. In this study, we investigated the dynamics of different resistance mechanisms in P. aeruginosa populations that have evolved under fluoroquinolone pressure, as well as the interactions between these mechanisms in evolutionary trajectories. Bacteria of strain ATCC27853 were selected under different concentrations of ciprofloxacin and levofloxacin for six paral ...[more]

PMID: 32758289

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Project description:The widespread use of antibiotics promotes the evolution and dissemination of resistance and tolerance mechanisms. To assess the relevance of tolerance and its implications for resistance development, we used in vitro evolution and analyzed the inpatient microevolution of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, an important human pathogen causing acute and chronic infections. We show that the development of tolerance precedes and promotes the acquisition of resistance in vitro, and we present evidence that similar processes shape antibiotic exposure in human patients. Our data suggest that during chronic infections, P. aeruginosa first acquires moderate drug tolerance before following distinct evolutionary trajectories that lead to high-level multidrug tolerance or to antibiotic resistance. Our studies propose that the development of antibiotic tolerance predisposes bacteria for the acquisition of resistance at early stages of infection and that both mechanisms independently promote bacterial survival during antibiotic treatment at later stages of chronic infections.IMPORTANCE Over the past decades, pan-resistant strains of major bacterial pathogens have emerged and have rendered clinically available antibiotics ineffective, putting at risk many of the major achievements of modern medicine, including surgery, cancer therapy, and organ transplantation. A thorough understanding of processes leading to the development of antibiotic resistance in human patients is thus urgently needed. We show that drug tolerance, the ability of bacteria to survive prolonged exposure to bactericidal antibiotics, rapidly evolves in the opportunistic human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa upon recurrent exposures to antibiotics. Our studies show that tolerance protects P. aeruginosa against different classes of antibiotics and that it generally precedes and promotes resistance development. The rapid evolution of tolerance during treatment regimens may thus act as a strong driving force to accelerate antibiotic resistance development. To successfully counter resistance, diagnostic measures and novel treatment strategies will need to incorporate the important role of antibiotic tolerance.

Project description:The rise in antibiotic resistance among bacterial pathogens has prompted the exploitation of alternative antibacterial strategies, such as antivirulence therapy. By inhibiting virulence traits, antivirulence drugs are expected to lessen pathogenicity without affecting bacterial growth, therefore avoiding the spread of resistance. However, some studies argued against this assumption, and the lack of antivirulence drugs in clinical use hampers the empirical assessment of this concept. Here we compared the mode of action and range of activity of two drugs which have been proposed for repurposing as quorum sensing and pyoverdine inhibitors in the human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa: the anticancer drug 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) and the antimycotic drug 5-fluorocytosine (5-FC), respectively. The effect on bacterial growth, emergence and spread of resistance, and activity against clinical isolates were assessed. Our results confirm that 5-FU has growth inhibitory activity on reference strains and can rapidly select for spontaneous resistant mutants with loss-of-function mutations in the upp gene, responsible for uracil conversion into UMP. These mutants were also insensitive to the anti-pyoverdine effect of 5-FC. Conversely, 5-FC did not cause relevant growth inhibition, likely because of poor enzymatic conversion into 5-FU by cytosine deaminase. However, coculturing experiments showed that 5-FU resistant mutants can outcompete sensitive cells in mixed populations, in the presence of not only 5-FU but also 5-FC. Moreover, we observed that serial passages of wild-type cells in 5-FC-containing medium leads to the appearance and spread of 5-FC insensitive sub-populations of 5-FU resistant cells. The different effect on growth of 5-FU and 5-FC was overall conserved in a large collection of cystic fibrosis (CF) isolates, corresponding to different infection stages and antibiotic resistance profiles, although high variability was observed among strains. Notably, this analysis also revealed a significant number of pyoverdine-deficient isolates, whose proportion apparently increases over the course of the CF infection. This study demonstrates that the efficacy of an antivirulence drug with no apparent effect on growth can be significantly influenced by the emergence of insensitive mutants, and highlights the importance of the assessment of resistance-associated fitness cost and activity on clinical isolates for the development of "resistance-proof" antivirulence drugs.

Dataset Information

Development of in vitro resistance to fluoroquinolones in Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

Publications

Development of in vitro resistance to fluoroquinolones in Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

Similar Datasets

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