Incidence of Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae and Carbapenemase- Producing Enterobacteriaceae Gene Distribution in Ulsan, Korea, 2018~2021

This study was conducted on the incidence of CRE infection and CPE gene distribution in Ulsan to prepare basic data for preventing the spread of CRE infection by confirming the regional characteristics of CRE infection. The results of the CRE infection test from 2018 to 2021 conducted by the Ulsan Metropolitan Government Research Institute of Public Health and Environment in accordance with the experimental method of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency’s SOP on CRE infection test were analyzed for the study. Through the analysis, it was confirmed that the positive rate of ‘CRE or CPE’ in the samples surveyed increased from 92.83% in 2018 to 97.62% in 2021. In the analyzed ‘CRE (including CP-CRE)’ samples, Ertapenem resistance was the most common at 94.34%, Imipenem resistance 65.37%, Meropenem resistance 63.34%, and Doripenem resistance 52.70%. Regarding the average distribution of ‘CRE (including CP-CRE)’ by genus for the four years, the genus Klebsiella was isolated the most with an average of 72.04%, followed by the genus Escherichia (10.81%), the genus Enterobacter (9.54%), and the genus Citrobacter (1.27%.). From 2018 to 2021, the proportion of ‘CP-CRE’ increased significantly from 59.07% to 68.45% and the types of genus and species identified as ‘CP-CRE’ were diversified during the same period. The distribution of the detected CPE genes were highest in KPC (89.31%), and NDM (8.53%), and the distribution of CPE gene subtypes also varied. It is expected that this study can be used as basic data for preparing suitable countermeasures against CRE infection in the community in the future KCI Citation Count: 0