Integron-Mediated Antibiotic Resistance in Acinetobacter baumannii Isolated from Intensive Care Unit Patients, Babol, North of Iran

BACKGROUND: We investigated the integron types and their relation with antibiotic resistance among A. baumannii isolates collected from intensive care unit patients, Babol, north of Iran. METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, a total of 73 bronchoalveolar lavage samples were obtained from patients in ICU. Susceptibility testing was performed by disk diffusion method. Types of integrons were identified by an integrase gene PCR. RESULTS: In total, 47.9% A. baumannii isolates were recovered from the BAL samples. All isolates were resistant to ceftazidime. 91.4% and 58.3% of isolates were MDR and XDR, respectively. The rate of colistin resistance with the E-test was 5.7%. Molecular analysis of class I, II, and III integrons showed that 25.7%, 88.6%, and 28.6% of the isolates carried the intI, intII, and intIII genes, respectively. DISCUSSION: Our results show that different classes of integrons are commonly spread among A. baumannii strains and these genomic segments can play an important role in the acquisition of MDR and XDR phenotypes. So monitoring drug resistance in A. baumannii isolates with the use of int gene PCR is very important to plan specific infection control measures to prevent the spread of MDR-AB and XDR-AB in Iran's hospitals.