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Genetic features of Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates associated with eye infections referred to Farabi Hospital, Tehran, Iran

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Abstract

Background

Pseudomonas is the most common cause of microbial keratitis especially in people who use contact lens. The virulence of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in different eye infections is associated with different virulence factors .

Methods

In this study, 54 P. aeruginosa isolates including 39 isolates from keratitis and 15 isolates from conjunctivitis were evaluated for their ability to form biofilm, production of protease, elastase, alkaline protease and their antibiotic-resistant patterns. The distribution of the exoS and exoU genes in the test strains were determined using PCR assays.

Results

Most of the eye infections (90.74%) were seen in people who used contact lenses, and in most of patients (72.22%), the infection was presented as keratitis. None of the isolates were resistant to a single antibiotic as tested. Multidrug resistance (MDR) was detected in two isolates (3.5%) which were resistant to more than one category of antibiotics. The exoU+/exoS+ isolates were in majority although in total, compared to exoS, there were more exoU in a greater number of samples. Most of the strains produce elastase but among all of ocular isolates, only 5.8% of the strains showed alkaline protease activity. Most of the ocular isolates were not capable of producing biofilm.

Conclusions

In our study, a high prevalence of virulence factors was observed in P. aeruginosa isolates from contact lens wearer with keratitis. As the P. aeruginosa isolates from different infection origins and different geographic region may have different virulence factors, having a better perception of these differences could help to improve development of clinical instructions for the control of keratitis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

    Farahnoosh Doustdar, Zohreh Abedinyfar & Hossein Goudarzi

  2. Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University, Tabriz, Iran

    Fatemeh Karimi

  3. Department of Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

    Fahimeh Asadi Amoli

Authors
  1. Farahnoosh Doustdar
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  2. Fatemeh Karimi
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  3. Zohreh Abedinyfar
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  4. Fahimeh Asadi Amoli
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  5. Hossein Goudarzi
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Correspondence to Farahnoosh Doustdar.

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Doustdar, F., Karimi, F., Abedinyfar, Z. et al. Genetic features of Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates associated with eye infections referred to Farabi Hospital, Tehran, Iran. Int Ophthalmol 39, 1581–1587 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10792-018-0980-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10792-018-0980-5

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