Variable phage susceptibility of Pseudomonas aeruginosa from patients with and without cystic fibrosis following treatment-emergent resistance to ceftolozane-tazobactam

Read the full article See related articles

Listed in

This article is not in any list yet, why not save it to one of your lists.
Log in to save this article

Abstract

Background

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a ubiquitous opportunistic bacterial pathogen associated with nosocomial infections and is a leading cause of infection in persons with cystic fibrosis (pwCF). The front-line treatment for multidrug-resistant P. aeruginosa infections is ceftolozane-tazobactam (C/T). While previous research has characterized clinical P. aeruginosa isolates that evolved resistance to C/T, the collateral effect of evolved resistance on susceptibility to bacteriophages has not been explored.

Methods

We collected paired P. aeruginosa clinical isolates from 10 pwCF and 18 non-pwCF who developed treatment-emergent C/T resistance. We compared genetic relatedness, acute and chronic virulence phenotypes, and antibiotic and phage susceptibilities between each pair of susceptible baseline and treatment-emergent C/T-resistant isolates.

Results

Treatment-emergent C/T-resistant isolates were genetically closely related to baseline isolates in all patients. Virulence phenotypes did not differ between pre-and post-C/T exposure isolates, but isolates from pwCF demonstrated differences in protease production, twitching motility, and amino acid auxotrophy compared to isolates from non-pwCF. Treatment-emergent C/T resistance was associated with increased resistance to ceftazidime and ceftazidime/avibactam, but no other trends in antibiotic or phage susceptibility were detected.

Conclusions

Treatment-emergent resistance to C/T does not cause predictable alterations in phage susceptibility across genotypically and phenotypically diverse multidrug-resistant P. aeruginosa clinical isolates.

Article activity feed