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Journal of Clinical Microbiology, July 2004, p. 3359-3362, Vol. 42, No. 7
0095-1137/04/$08.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/JCM.42.7.3359-3362.2004
Copyright © 2004, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Extended-Spectrum-ß-Lactamase (TEM-52)-Producing Strains of Salmonella enterica of Various Serotypes Isolated in France
François-Xavier Weill,* Marie Demartin, Laëtitia Fabre, and Patrick A. D. Grimont
Centre National de Référence des Salmonella, Unité de Biodiversité des Bactéries Pathogènes Emergentes, INSERM U389, Institut Pasteur, 75724 Paris Cedex 15, France
Received 30 January 2004/
Returned for modification 18 March 2004/
Accepted 25 March 2004

ABSTRACT
From 2002 to 2003, four isolates of
Salmonella enterica serotypes
Typhimurium, Enteritidis, Blockley, and Panama, isolated in
France from patients with gastroenteritis, were found to produce
extended-spectrum ß-lactamase TEM-52. The study showed
the
blaTEM-52 gene to be located in a Tn
3-like structure and
carried by 100- or 32-kb conjugative plasmids.

TEXT
Salmonella enterica is a major food-borne enteric pathogen in
humans worldwide. Wild-type strains of
Salmonella are usually
susceptible to ß-lactams, but an increase in the rate
of ampicillin resistance in the last decade with the emergence
of
S. enterica serotype Typhimurium phage type DT 104 has been
observed in developed countries (
7). More recently, the emergence
of strains of serotype Newport that produce the plasmidic cephamycinase
CMY-2 (known as Newport-MDRAmpC) and are resistant to extended-spectrum
cephalosporins (ESC) has been reported in the United States
(
9). Extended-spectrum ß-lactamases (ESBLs), which
also inactivate the ESC, are very rare in the genus
Salmonella.
However the number of reported cases in the different serotypes
of this organism has been increasing worldwide in recent years
(
1,
3,
4,
6,
10,
12-
14,
18,
20-
23). Most ESBLs reported in
Salmonella derive from the common plasmid-mediated penicillinases TEM-1,
TEM-2, and SHV-1, although there are some other unrelated enzyme
groups including CTX-M and PER. We report here the characterization
of four TEM-52-ESBL-producing
S. enterica strains received at
the French National Reference Center for
Salmonella in 2002
and 2003. The four isolates described in Table
1 were recovered
from stool samples of patients with gastroenteritis. They belonged
to four different serotypes: Enteritidis, Typhimurium, Panama,
and Blockley. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis with XbaI used
according to a protocol described previously (
22) confirmed
the isolates to be unrelated (Table
1).
Antibiotic susceptibility was determined by the disk diffusion
method using Mueller-Hinton agar and 32 antibiotic disks (Bio-Rad,
Marnes la Coquette, France) according to the recommendations
of the French Society of Microbiology (
19). MICs of the ß-lactams
were determined by Etest (AB Biodisk, Solna, Sweden).
Escherichia coli ATCC 25922 was used as the control. The four isolates were
resistant to ampicillin, ceftriaxone, and ceftazidime by the
disk diffusion method. All four isolates were susceptible to
cefoxitin, imipenem, aminoglycosides, quinolones, sulfonamides,
trimethoprim, chloramphenicol, and tetracycline. The ESBL detection
Etest strips and the double disk diffusion test (
11) showed
an ESBL phenotype for the four isolates. The MICs of the ß-lactams
are shown in Table
2. Isolates from serotypes Typhimurium (TYP)
and Enteritidis (ENT) exhibited a higher level of resistance
to ceftazidime and ceftriaxone (MIC > 256 mg/liter) than
isolates from serotypes Panama (PAN) and Blockley (BLO) (MIC
from 8 to 32 mg/liter).
Crude extracts of ß-lactamases were obtained by sonication.
Isoelectrofocusing was performed by using a PhastSystem apparatus
with PhastGel IEF 3-9 gels (Amersham-Pharmacia Biotech, Freiburg,
Germany) as described previously (
22). The four isolates produced
only one ß-lactamase with a pI of 6.0.
Total DNA was extracted by using the InstaGene matrix kit (Bio-Rad). PCR analysis was performed with primers TEM-F (5'-ATAAAATTCTTGAAGACGAAA-3') and TEM-R (5'-GACAGTTACCAATGCTTAATC-3') to amplify a 1,080-bp fragment of the blaTEM gene as described previously (22). DNA sequencing of PCR products and deduced amino acid sequence analysis revealed that the ß-lactamase was TEM-52, which differed from TEM-1 by three point mutations, Glu104
Lys, Met182
Thr, and Gly238
Ser (Ambler numbering) (2). The DNA sequence of isolate BLO was 100% identical to that of blaTEM-52b (GenBank accession numbers AF12644 and AF027199), while the sequence of the three other isolates was identical to that of blaTEM-52a (GenBank accession number Y13612), except for a silent mutation located at the position Gly78 (GGC
GGT).
A resistance transfer experiment was carried out in liquid medium by using E. coli C1a (nalA) as the recipient strain. Transconjugants were selected on Mueller-Hinton agar supplemented with ceftazidime (2 mg/liter) and nalidixic acid (68 mg/liter). The E. coli transconjugants pPAN-1, pTYP-2', pENT-5', and pBLO-1 were obtained for isolates PAN, TYP, ENT, and BLO, respectively, presenting a similar pattern (Table 2) and expressing a ß-lactamase with a pI of 6.0. Additionally, transconjugants pTYP-1 and pENT-1 were obtained for isolates TYP and ENT, respectively, presenting a lower resistance to ß-lactams (Table 2).
Plasmid DNA was purified by using a QIAGEN (Courtaboeuf, France) Plasmid Midi kit. Molecular sizes of plasmids were determined by using Taxotron software (Institut Pasteur, Paris, France) by comparing them to plasmids of known sizes. Southern hybridization with a PCR-generated probe for blaTEM (1,080 bp) was performed as described previously (7). Extraction of plasmid DNA revealed a 100-kb common plasmid in the isolates PAN, TYP, and ENT and a 32-kb plasmid in isolate BLO, both of which hybridized with probe blaTEM (Fig. 1). Additionally, hybridization signals were observed with 10- and 9-kb plasmids in the more resistant isolates ENT and TYP, respectively (Fig. 1). The 100-kb plasmid was detected in E. coli transconjugants pPAN-1, pTYP-1, pTYP-2', pENT-1, and pENT-5', and the 32-kb plasmid was detected in pBLO-1 (Fig. 1). The 10- and 9-kb plasmids were also observed in transconjugants pENT-5' and pTYP-2', respectively. The plasmid DNA from transconjugants pPAN-1, pTYP-1, and pENT-1 were compared by restriction endonuclease (EcoRI and PstI; Roche, Mannheim, Germany) and Southern blot (with probe blaTEM) analyses. The plasmids had a very similar fingerprint (Fig. 2A). To study the 10- and 9-kb plasmids carrying additional blaTEM genes, Southern hybridization with a blaTEM probe after restriction with PstI was performed on plasmid DNA from transconjugants pTYP-2' and pENT-5' that were compared to pTYP-1 and pENT-1, respectively (Fig. 2B and C). The probe hybridized intensively to three bands of 5, 2.9, and 1.2 kb with pENT-5' and two bands of 2.9 and 2.75 kb with pTYP-2'. Due to the relative amount of 9- or 10- and 100-kb plasmid DNA in pENT-5' and in pTYP-2' (Fig. 1A, lanes 4 and 7), these hybridization patterns have been attributed to 9- and 10-kb plasmids. As there is one internal site in blaTEM, these data suggested the existence of two copies of blaTEM in the 9-kb plasmid and three copies in the 10-kb plasmid.
To determine whether
blaTEM-52 was located in Tn
3, Tn
3-specific
PCR was performed on plasmid DNA with the following primers
designed on the basis of the sequence of Tn
3 in
Salmonella (GenBank
accession number
AB103092): forward primer 5'-CACGAATGAGGGCCGACAGGA-3'
(located at positions 4018 to 4038 in the
tnpR gene) and reverse
primer 5'-ACCCACTCGTGCACCCAACTG-3' (located at positions 4492
to 4512 in
blaTEM). All transconjugants gave the expected PCR
product of 500 bp (data not shown). These results indicated
the presence in our isolates of
blaTEM-52 in a Tn
3-like structure
carried by a self-conjugative plasmid. Transposition of one
or more copies of
blaTEM-52 to other plasmids within a bacterium
may explain the higher resistance of isolates TYP and ENT.
TEM-52 ESBL was first reported in a Klebsiella pneumoniae strain isolated in 1996 in France, from hospitalized children originating from Athens, Greece (17). Since 1996, only one isolate of TEM-52-producing E. coli has been identified in France during a national hospital survey (8). In 1997 and 1999, two studies demonstrated TEM-52 to be the most prevalent TEM-type ESBL among E. coli strains in Korea and among enterobacterial species in Italy (15, 16). The first report of TEM-52 in the genus Salmonella described two strains isolated in 1998 from a hospitalized Yugoslavian infant (20). Both strains exhibited different resistance phenotypes attributed to different copy numbers of blaTEM-52. As resistance was not self-transmissible, the authors suggested the location of the ESBL gene on a transposon without experiment. A second report described five isolates of S. enterica serotypes Saintpaul, Stanley, Agona, and Enteritidis producing TEM-52 and recovered between 1995 and 1997 in Korea that came mostly from hospitalized patients (12). The blaTEM-52 genes were carried on conjugative plasmids greater than 180 kb in length with diverse genetic characteristics. The last report concerned TEM-52-producing isolates of serotype Enteritidis from a hospital outbreak (five cases) in Scotland in 2001 and 2002 (23). The blaTEM-52 gene was carried on a 95-kb conjugative plasmid. The emergence of ESBL-producing Salmonella strains in France is a new phenomenon. No ESBLs were detected among human Salmonella isolates in multicenter surveys conducted by a hospital-based network in 1994 (n = 2,622) and 1997 (n = 2,464) (5). More recently, two surveys conducted by the French National Reference Center for Salmonella in 2000 (n = 1,066) and in 2002 (n = 1,140) identified only one human ESBL-producing Salmonella isolate (isolate TYP, this study) in 2002. One hypothesis for the emergence of TEM-52-producing Salmonella is the nosocomial acquisition by the exchange of ESBL genes among enteric bacteria frequently encountered in hospitals and selected by traces of ESC used in humans. An alternative hypothesis that has been suggested in a report of ESBL (SHV-12)-producing Salmonella, and with the emergence of Newport MDRAmpC, is the transmission through the food chain and consequently to antibiotic selection pressure in livestock (6, 9). In our study, the isolates were generally not acquired from a hospital, and we suspected the second hypothesis but we didn't have evidence for it. This hypothesis was strengthened by the detection of six TEM-52-producing Salmonella strains belonging to four different serotypes and isolated in poultry in Belgium during the period of 2001 to 2002 (A. Cloeckaert, personal communication).
This study is the first report of blaTEM-52 in S. enterica serotypes Panama and Blockley and describes TEM-52-producing isolates of Salmonella in France. The study shows that the blaTEM-52 gene is located in a Tn3-like structure and carried by a conjugative plasmid. Both features explain the high level of resistance of some isolates and the spreading of blaTEM-52 among Salmonella of various serotypes.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank all the corresponding laboratories of the French
Salmonella network and, in particular, E. Dehecq (Laboratoire de Microbiologie,
Centre Hospitalier Saint-Philibert, Lomme, France) and J. Ficheux
(Laboratoire d'Analyses de Biologie Médicale, Dunkerque,
France).

FOOTNOTES
* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Centre National de Référence des
Salmonella, Unité de Biodiversité des Bactéries Pathogènes Emergentes, Institut Pasteur, 28 rue du Docteur Roux, 75724 Paris cedex 15, France. Phone: 33-(0)1 45 68 83 45. Fax: 33-(0)1 5 68 88 37. E-mail:
fxweill{at}pasteur.fr.


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Journal of Clinical Microbiology, July 2004, p. 3359-3362, Vol. 42, No. 7
0095-1137/04/$08.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/JCM.42.7.3359-3362.2004
Copyright © 2004, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
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