Emergence and ongoing outbreak of ST80 vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium in Guangdong province, China from 2021 to 2023: a multicenter, time-series and genomic epidemiological study

作者：Cong Shen, Li Luo, Hongyun Zhou, Yinglun Xiao, Jinxiang Zeng, Liling Zhang, Jieying Pu, Jianming Zeng, Ni Zhang, Yueting Jiang, Lingqing Xu, Dingqiang Chen, Gang Li, Kuihai Wu, Hua Yu, Min Wang, Xuemin Guo, Juan Wang, Bin Huang, Chen Cha · 发表于：Emerging Microbes & Infections · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.1080/22221751.2024.2361030 · 被引用次数：23 · 研究领域：Antimicrobial Resistance in Staphylococcus、Bacterial Identification and Susceptibility Testing、Streptococcal Infections and Treatments

Background: Surveillance systems revealed that the prevalence of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium (VREfm) has increased. We aim to investigate the epidemiological and genomic characteristics of VREfm in China.Methods: We collected 20747 non-redundant E. faecium isolates from inpatients across 19 hospitals in six provinces between Jan 2018 and June 2023. VREfm was confirmed by antimicrobial susceptibility testing. The prevalence was analyzed using changepoint package in R. Genomic characteristics were explored by whole-genome sequencing.Results: 5.59% (1159/20747) of E. faecium isolates were resistant to vancomycin. The prevalence of VREfm increased in Guangdong province from 5% before 2021 to 20%-50% in 2023 (p < 0.0001), but not in the other five provinces. Two predominant clones before 2021, ST17 and ST78, were substituted by an emerging clone, ST80, from 2021 to 2023 (88.63%, 195/220). All ST80 VREfm from Guangdong formed a single lineage (SC11) and were genetically distant from the ST80 VREfm from other countries, suggesting a regional outbreak. All ST80 VREfm in SC11 carried a new type of plasmid harboring a vanA cassette, which was embedded in a Tn1546-like structure flanked by IS1678 and ISL3. However, no conjugation-related gene was detected and no transconjugant was obtained in conjugation experiment, indicating that the outbreak of ST80 VREfm could be attributed to clonal transmission.Conclusions: We revealed an ongoing outbreak of ST80 VREfm with a new van...