Virulence Genes in Klebsiella pneumoniae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa Isolated from the Urine of HIV Patients and Pregnant Women in Port Harcourt, Nigeria.

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Abstract

Virulence genes are known to occur in microorganisms which accelerates their pathogenicity and can also determine the extent at which infection occurs. The study therefore was aimed at determining the virulence genes in Klebsiella pneumoniae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa in urine samples of HIV patients and pregnant women attending University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital. One hundred and thirty (130) urine samples were collected from HIV patients and pregnant women. The midstream urine from each participant were analysed for presence/prevalence and isolation of Klebsiella pneumoniae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa using cystine lactose electrolyte deficient agar (CLED) media. PCR assays were used for screening seven (7) virulence encoding genes which included, mrkD, rmpA, entB for Klebsiella pneumoniae and lasB, algD, exoS and plcH for Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The results highlighted that entB (n=7, 36.8%) and plcH (n=3, 27.3%) were the most frequent virulence gene for Klebsiella pneumoniae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa respectively. Furthermore, the virulence genes detection was higher for Klebsiella pneumoniae in HIV patients when compared with pregnant women. It also revealed the presence of virulence genes in Pseudomonas aeruginosa from pregnant women and its absence in HIV patients,

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  1. The work submitted does not meet Access Microbiology’s criteria for sound science for the following reasons; 1) The methodology section of this manuscript contains details of the culture and identification workups done on urine samples collected from patients. However, the results of this work are not reported in this manuscript but are published elsewhere (https://www.atlantis-press.com/proceedings/owsd-23/125995337). Together, the results published in Advances in Biological Sciences Research and these results submitted to Access Microbiology are the same study but split and published in two halves. We believe it is an unethical practice to use results in multiple manuscripts originating from the same study. We understand this may be an unintentional error on your part. 2) The methodology states 260 samples were processed, but no numbers are given for how many actual bacterial strains were screened for virulence genes in this manuscript. Looking at the previously published work and the reported % n=X figures in this manuscript I make the sample sizes to be 19 Klebsiella strains (16 from pregnant women, and 3 from HIV patients) and 11 Pseudomonas strains (10 from pregnant women, and 1 from HIV patients). These samples sizes are not large enough to do a comparative analysis of virulence gene prevalence between strains isolated from pregnant people and people with HIV and cannot support many of the discussion points of this manuscript. For comparisons between two patient cohorts, you would need to increase the sample size and consider what number would be required to make meaningful comparisons which stand up to statistical scrutiny. Similarly, to give a useful picture of virulence gene prevalence in Klebsiella and Pseudomonas strains from urine samples in general, the sample size needs to consider the known variation in virulence gene content at the bacterial species population level - what number of strains would be reasonable to capture the true diversity of virulence gene prevalence in your sample type?