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The overall objective of workpackage 29 is to catalogue bacterial collections throughout the network for existing animicrobial profiles. In particular the workpackage will focus on aminoglycosidase resistance mechanisms, which pose a high risk of spreading through bacterial populations through genetic transfer. <P>As the emergence of resistance is a dynamic process, a third and ongoing objective will be to monitor emerging antimicrobial resistance patterns within the European Union, and respond to, and focus on, antimicrobial resistance determinants of importance.
Emerging antimicrobial resistance determinants in bacteria from food, animals, environment and humans remains an important food safety issue for Med-Vet-Net. The initial meeting of this workpackage, was held in Malta and attended by 17 participants, from 13 institutions in 10 countries.<P> A catalogue is being collated of all pathogens for which identification and antimicrobial-resistance profiling is undertaken within participating laboratories. This will provide an inventory in Excel format of all bacterial isolates available for the genetic analysis of antimicrobial resistance and spreading determinants. This inventory will be made available to all participants. The initial focus of the workpackage is on the dissemination of the novel aminoglycoside-resistance mediated by16S rRNA-methylases and recently detected in humans and animals in Europe and Asia. For the presumptive presence of such resistance in isolates, the phenotype has been defined as high-level resistance to the aminoglycosides, including amikacin, tobramycin, kanamycin and gentamicin. The presence of this resistance mechanism is especially worrisome, as it may be genetically linked to other genetic determinants conferring high-level resistance to macrolides, all aminoglycosides, sulfonamides and CTX-cephalosprinases.<P> A PhD student has been recruited to develop genetic tools for sensitive and specific detection of the genes encoding the 16S rRNA-methylases. Initial work has already demonstrated the successful detection of an outbreak of bacteria carrying the 16S rRNA-methylase gene.
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