Abstract
Pseudomonas aeruginosa is one of the most important opportunistic pathogens responsible for various types of hospital infections. High prevalence of antibiotic resistance in P. aeruginosa strains of human clinical samples cause more severe diseases for a longer period of time. The current research was done in order to study the distribution of blaIMP-1 gene among the imipenem-resistant P. aeruginosa strains isolated from burn and urinary tract infections of hospitalized patients. Two-hundred and forty-three P. aeruginosa isolates recovered from the cases of burn and urinary tract infections of inpatients and outpatients were analysis for antibiotic resistance pattern using the disk diffusion method. Then, imipenem-resistant isolates were further analyzed for distribution of blaIMP-1 gene using the PCR. Of 243 P. aeruginosa isolates, 146 strains (60.08%) were taken from outpatients and 97 strains (39.91%) were taken from inpatients. P. aeruginosa isolates harbored the highest levels of resistance against streptomycin (100%), nalidixic acid (100%), aztreonam (100%), cotrimoxazole (95.47%), ciprofloxacin (88.47%), cefotaxime (84.36%) and gentamycin (83.95%). Inpatients had a relatively higher levels of antibiotic resistance. One-hundred and twenty-one out of 126 (96.03%) imipenem-resistant P. aeruginosa isolates harbored the blaIMP-1 gene. Inpatients also had a relatively higher prevalence of blaIMP-1 gene. High prevalence of blaIMP-1 gene and also imipenemresistant P. aeruginosa are important public health issue. Clinical laboratories should consider the detection of the blaIMP-1 gene among the P. aeruginosa isolates of clinical samples.