Mobile colistin resistance (mcr) genes and recent developments in colistin resistance detection.

Divya Lakshmanan, Dhamodharan Ramasamy, Veni Subramanyam, Suresh Kumar Saravanan

Letters in applied microbiology 2023 Sep 01

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The peptide antibiotic colistin has been reserved as a last resort antibiotic treatment option for cases where other antibiotics including carbapenems have failed. Recent emergence of colistin resistance and discovery of mobile colistin resistance (mcr) genes, which encode the cell wall modifying phosphoethanolamine transferase enzyme, complicates the issue. The mcr genes have been associated with conjugative plasmids and can be horizontally transferred between different bacterial species. The global spread of mcr genes has been extensively documented and this warrants surveillance of the resistance genes in the community. However, susceptibility testing of colistin is fraught with practical challenges owing to the chemical nature of the drug and multiple mechanisms of resistance. Although broth microdilution is the current gold standard for colistin susceptibility testing, the method poses technical challenges. Hence, alternative detection methods for screening colistin resistance are the need of the hour. Several methods have been studied in the recent times to address this issue. In this review, we discuss some of the recent developments in the detection of colistin resistance. © The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Applied Microbiology International.

Citation

Divya Lakshmanan, Dhamodharan Ramasamy, Veni Subramanyam, Suresh Kumar Saravanan. Mobile colistin resistance (mcr) genes and recent developments in colistin resistance detection. Letters in applied microbiology. 2023 Sep 01;76(9)