Multidrug-Resistant ESBL/AmpC-Producing Klebsiella pneumoniae Isolated from Healthy Thoroughbred Racehorses in Japan

Extended-spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL)- and AmpC β-lactamase (AmpC)-producing spp. have become a major health problem, leading to treatment failure in humans and animals. This study aimed to evaluate the presence of ESBL/AmpC-producing spp. isolated from racehorses in Japan. Feces samples from 212 healthy Thoroughbred racehorses were collected from the Japan Racing Association Training Centers between March 2017 and August 2018. ESBL/AmpC-producing spp. were isolated using selective medium containing 1 µg/mL cefotaxime. All isolates were subjected to bacterial species identification (MALDI-TOF MS), antimicrobial susceptibility test (disk diffusion test), characterization of resistance genes (PCR), conjugation assay, and genetic relatedness (multilocus sequence typing/MLST). Twelve ESBL/AmpC-producing (ESBL/AmpC-KP) were isolated from 3.3% of horse samples. Antimicrobial resistance profiling for 17 antimicrobials showed all ESBL/AmpC-KP were multidrug-resistant (MDR). Only 1 isolate was confirmed as an ESBL producer ( positive), whereas the other 11 isolates were plasmid-mediated AmpC (pAmpC) producers ( positive). On the basis of MLST analysis, the ESBL-KP isolate was identified as sequence type (ST)-133 and four different STs among AmpC-KP isolates, ST-145, ST-4830, ST-4831, and ST-4832, were found to share six of the seven loci constituting a single-locus variant. This is the first study to show carrying MDR pAmpC isolated from a racehorse.