Abstract
We explore the genetic diversity of class D oxacillinases, including OXA-23, -24 (-40), -58 and, particularly, the intrinsic OXA-51-like genes, among multidrug-resistant (MDR) Acinetobacter baumannii strains from inpatients at a tertiary care hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Sequence-based typing (SBT) of the OXA-51-like gene was carried out on 253 isolates. Selected isolates (n = 66) were subjected to multilocus sequence typing (MLST). The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) typing results showed that all isolates (n = 253) contained the OXA-51-like and OXA-23 genes. However, the OXA-58 gene was detected in five isolates. Further, none of the isolates had the OXA-40 (identical to the OXA-24) gene. SBT revealed a high OXA-51-like genotypic diversity and showed that all isolates were clustered into four main groups: OXA-66 (62.3 %), followed by OXA-69 (19.1 %), OXA-132 (7.6 %) and other OXA-51-like genes (10.3 %), including OXA-79, -82, -92, -131 and -197. MLST revealed four main sequence types (STs), 2, 19, 20 and 25, among the isolates, in addition to six isolates with newly designated ST194-ST197 singletons. Further, a high prevalence (81.4 %) of OXA-66 and OXA-69-like genes in A. baumannii was identified. More studies are essential in order to explore the molecular mechanisms that confer carbapenem-resistant phenotypes for A. baumannii isolates and to investigate the genetic diversity of other OXA-D genes.