COMBACTE-EURECA collection: carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae
COMBACTE-EURECA collection: carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae The COMBACTE consortium pursues the prevention and treatment of antibiotic-resistant-associated infections through four main projects. Among them, COMBACTE-CARE, seeks to support the development of new treatment options, together with the analysis of clinical and epidemiological datasets in all European member states and affiliated countries. As part of this, the European prospective cohort study on Enterobacterales showing resistance to carbapenems (EURECA) aimed to understand how the patients across Europe are infected and currently treated for Enterobacterales-associated infections, but also which subgroups of patients responded well to different antibiotic treatments.  Local laboratories submitted carbapenem non-susceptible isolates to EURECA between May 2016 to November 2018 from cohorts of patients with bacterial infections in Southern European countries. The collection comprises 687 strains recovered among clinical samples from 41 hospitals in nine Southern European countries. All isolates were resistant to at least one carbapenem antibiotic.  We identified 11 clonal complexes (CCs), with most isolates belonging to the high-risk clones CC258, CC101, CC11, and CC307. blaKPC-like was the most prevalent carbapenemase-encoding gene (45%), along with the dominance of the CC258 lineage. Equally, blaOXA-48 had a wide-ranging spread (39%), and blaNDM was present in half of the ST11 isolates representing a particular lineage circulating in Greece. Two carbapenemase genes were found in 38 isolates (5.5%). Dominating clones and their associated carbapenemase genes exhibit relevant regional differences, namely CC258 in Greece, Italy, and Spain, CC101 present in Serbia and Romania and CC14 in Türkiye.