An OXA-66/OXA-51-like carbapenemase and possibly an efflux pump are associated with resistance to imipenem in Acinetobacter baumannii

We investigated the mechanisms involved in imipenem resistance in 23 clinical strains of Acinetobacter baumannii. Sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) analysis showed the presence of a 30-kDa protein in imipenem-intermediate A. baumannii (IIAB) and imipenem-resistant A. baumannii (IRAB) strains; this protein was almost undetectable in imipenem-susceptible A. baumannii (ISAB) strains. The 30-kDa protein was identified as an OXA-51-like carbapenemase using two-dimensional gel electrophoresis and mass spectrometry. Similar to other recent findings, bla(OXA-51-like) genes were found to exist in all 23 clinical strains; however, the transcript levels of bla(OXA-51-like) in the IIAB and IRAB were higher than in the ISAB strains using reverse transcriptase PCR (RT-PCR) and real-time RT-PCR assays. This change was due to the presence of an insertion sequence, ISAba1, upstream of bla(OXA-51-like) in the IIAB and IRAB strains that was not present in the ISAB strains. The introduction of bla(OXA-66) (a bla(OXA-51-like), gene), identified in ISAB ab1254 and IRAB ab1,266, into Escherichia coli TOP10 cells resulted in 3.95-fold and 7.90-fold elevations in resistance to imipenem, respectively. Furthermore, when ISAB ab8 and ISAB ab1254 and their in vitro-selected imipenem-resistant mutants ISAB ab8(r) and ISAB ab1254(r) were compared, the results showed no change in the bla(OXA-66)/bla(OXA-51-like) gene sequences, in expression of the gene, and in the outer membrane protein profiles. However, there was a four- to eightfold reduction in imipenem resistance upon adding carbonyl cyanide m-chlorophenylhydrazone. Taken together, these results suggest that the OXA-66/OXA-51-like carbapenemase contributes to intrinsic resistance to imipenem; however, drug export by an efflux pump may be more important and/or occur more frequently in imipenem-resistant A. baumannii. Furthermore, this is the first report of a Taiwanese strain of an OXA-66/OXA-51-like carbapenemase that confers imipenem resistance in A. baumannii.