Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To investigate antibiotic resistance and carriage class 1 and 2 integrons in clinical isolates of Acinetobacter baumannii (A. baumannii) from Tehran, Iran. METHODS: Antimicrobial susceptibility testing was performed according to the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute. The presence of integrons was investigated by PCR using specific primers. RESULTS: Among isolated A. baumannii strains, 82 were multidrug resistant, 27 samples (54) were resistant to three or more than three antibiotics and 16 samples (32) showed resistance to two antibiotics. Integrons were detected from 44 of 50 isolates (88), with classes 1 and 2 being observed in 42 (21/50) and 82 (41/50) of isolates, respectively. Integron-positive A. baumannii isolates showed higher antibiotic resistance than integron-negative isolates and all showed a multidrug-resistant phenotype. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings show that classes 1 and 2 integrons, and especially classes 2 integrons are widely disseminated among A. baumannii strains isolated from Tehran and these structures are playing a major role in the acquisition of multidrug resistance in these strains. So monitoring of drug resistance with investigating carriage class 1 and 2 integrons is very important to plan speci fi c infection control measures due to multidrug resistance A. baumannii in Iran hospitals.