Abstract
Hospitalized patients are likely to have chronic illnesses and are at an increased risk of mortality due to infection caused by MDR bacteria. We aimed to identify carbapenem-resistant genes carrying
Klebsiella pneumoniae
(
K. pneumoniae
) isolates and their risk factors recovered from adult patients with comorbidities. A cross-sectional study was carried out between April 2021 and December 2021 at King Abdullah Hospital (KAH) in Bisha province, Saudi Arabia. Seventy-one multi-drug resistant
K. pneumoniae
recovered from clinical samples and screened for carbapenemase genes of
bla
OXA-48-like,
bla
NDM-1,
bla
KPC,
bla
VIM, and
bla
IMP. Of 71 MDR
K. pneumoniae
examined, 47 (66.2%) isolates harbored various carbapenemase genes. The most prevalent single resistance gene was
bla
OXA-48-like (62.5%; n = 25), and 33.3% of them were recovered from sputum isolates. The
bla
NDM-1 gene was detected in 12 (30.0%) isolates, and eight of them were recovered from urine (n = 4) and blood (n = 4). Two (5.0%) single
bla
KPC genes were recovered from the sputum (n = 1) and blood (n = 1) isolates. In contrast, no
bla
IMP- and
bla
VIM-carrying isolates were detected. The co-existence of two resistance genes between
bla
OXA-48-like and
bla
NDM-1 was found in six strains, whereas only one strain was found to be produced in the three genes of
bla
NDM-1,
bla
KPC, and
bla
OXA-48-like. There were statistically significant associations between the presence of carbapenem-gene-carrying
K. pneumoniae
and patients’ gender (χ2(1) = 5.94,
p
= 0.015), intensive care unit admission (χ2(1) = 7.649,
p
= 0.002), and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (χ2(1) = 4.851,
p
= 0.028). The study highlighted the existence of carbapenemase-producing
K. pneumoniae
, particularly
bla
OXA-48-like and
bla
NDM-1, in patients with comorbidities. Our findings emphasize the importance of the molecular characterization of resistance-determinant-carrying bacterial pathogens as a part of infection control and prevention in hospital settings.