Evaluation of CHROMagarTM KPC for the detection of carbapenemase-producing Enterobacteriaceae in rectal surveillance cultures

Theofano Panagea (1) , Irene Galani (1) , Maria Souli (1) , Panagiota Adamou (1) , Anastasia Antoniadou (1) , Helen Giamarellou (1)

1 4th Department of Internal Medicine

In this study, the performance of the chromogenic medium CHROMagar™ KPC was evaluated and was compared with in-house daily-prepared MacConkey agar plates supplemented with imipenem (1mg/L) for the detection of carbapenemase-producing Enterobacteriaceae. In this surveillance study, rectal swabs were cultured on both media and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for and was used to confirm the genotype of growing colonies of Enterobacteriaceae. CHROMagar KPC was also tested with 17 genotypically characterised carbapenemase-producing and non-producing Gram-negative bacteria. It was shown that CHROMagar allows rapid detection of carbapenemase-producing Enterobacteriaceae, although - and -harbouring isolates could not be differentiated by colour or colony morphology. The positive and negative predictive values of the tested methods for the detection of carbapenemase-producing Enterobacteriaceae were, respectively, 100% and 98.8% for CHROMagar KPC and 94.7% and 88.6% for imipenem-supplemented MacConkey agar. CHROMagar KPC medium is a useful screening medium for carbapenemase-producing Enterobacteriaceae in stools in settings with a high proportion of patients colonised with a variety of carbapenemase-producers.

Mots clés: Imipenem-supplemented MacConkey agar; KPC detection; VIM detection; Klebsiella pneumoniae; Enterobacter spp.; Enterobacter spp

Theofano Panagea, Irene Galani, Maria Souli, Panagiota Adamou, Anastasia Antoniadou, et al.. Evaluation of CHROMagarTM KPC for the detection of carbapenemase-producing Enterobacteriaceae in rectal surveillance cultures. International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, 2011, 37 (2), pp.124. ⟨10.1016/j.ijantimicag.2010.10.010⟩. ⟨hal-00659904⟩