Fosfomycin

The isolates were initially processed using disk-diffusion antimicrobial susceptibility testing for amikacin, aztreonam, cefepime, ceftazidime, ciprofloxacin, doripenem, gentamicin, imipenem, levofloxacin, meropenem, netilmicin, piperacillin-tazobactam, ticarcillin-clavulanate, and tobramycin with Oxoid (Basingstoke, United Kingdom) disks. Complementarily, an in-house broth microdilution method using cation-adjusted Mueller–Hinton Broth (Sigma-Aldrich, St. Louis, MO, USA) was performed to determine the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) for amikacin gentamicin, imipenem, meropenem, colistin, polymyxin B, tigecycline, and ceftazidime-avibactam, and all salts were purchased from Sigma-Aldrich (St. Louis, MO, USA), except for avibactam, which was donated by Pfizer Inc. To complete the antimicrobial susceptibility panel, novel antimicrobials/combinations were evaluated with Liofilchem (Roseto degli Abruzzi, Italy) MIC test strips for ceftolozane–tazobactam, meropenem–vaborbactam, imipenem–relebactam, cefoperazone–sulbactam, cefiderocol, plazomicin, eravacycline, and fosfomycin.

A total of 18 antibiotics were used in the susceptibility test, by disk diffusion, with amoxicillin, amoxicillin and clavulanic acid, cefoxitin, cefotaxime, ceftazidime, ceftiofur, cefepime, ceftaroline, aztreonam, meropenem, ciprofloxacin, gentamicin, sulfamethoxazole-trimethoprim, tigecycline, tetracycline, fosfomycin, chloramphenicol, and nitrofurantoin (Liofilchem, Roseto degli Abruzzi, Italy). The interpretation was performed according to CLSI [45 ]. tigecycline resistance was interpreted according to EUCAST [46 ]. E. coli ATCC 25922 was used as quality control. In accordance with EUCAST standards, the minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) for colistin was determined by the broth microdilution method [46 ]. MDR profiles were determined according to standard criteria [26 (link)]. ESBL detection was performed using the double-disk synergy test (DDST) [45 ].

Eleven carbapenem resistance genes (bla_IMP, bla_VIM, bla_NDM, bla_SPM, bla_AIM, bla_DIM, bla_GIM, bla_SIM, bla_KPC, bla_BIC, and bla_OXA–48) (Poirel et al., 2011 (link)) were screened using PCR detection from the presumptive carbapenemase-producing bacteria. The amplicons were sequenced (Macrogen) and identified using NCBI BLAST¹. For the screened carbapenemase-producing bacteria, MDR to 16 antibiotics was determined using Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion, and resistance to colistin was determined using broth dilution methods. For MDR, the following antibiotic disks were used: ampicillin-sulbactam (10/10 μg), cefotaxime (30 μg), ceftazidime (30 μg), chloramphenicol (30 μg) ciprofloxacin (5 μg), colistin (2 mg/L), doripenem (10 μg), fosfomycin (200 μg), gentamicin (10 μg), levofloxacin (5 μg), meropenem (10 μg), netilmicin (10 μg), piperacillin (100 μg), tetracycline (30 μg), tobramycin (10 μg), and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (1.25/23.75 μg) (Liofilchem, Roseto degli Abruzzi, Italy). Resistance to the antibiotics was determined according to the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) guideline (Clinical Laboratory Standars and Institue, 2016 ). Subsequently, MICs of 16 antibiotics for E. coli strain N7 were evaluated using the broth dilution method (Hasselmann, 2003 (link)).