1. CPOs are able to persist and recombine in sink drains.
CPOs are able to persist and recombine in sink drains. (A) In February 2011, E. cloacae carrying two blaKPC+ plasmids was cultured from patient Y. This organism may have also colonized a sink in the patient’s room. (B) Eleven months later (January 2012), an isolate from patient A, who was colonized with blaKPC+K. pneumoniae upon admission, was likely introduced into the same sink (KPNIH27). (C) KPNIH27’s pKPC-39c plasmid in a sink drain isolate is hypothesized to have horizontally transferred to the sink drain isolate from patient Y, generating strain ECNIH2. Plasmids carrying the blaKPC gene are colored, and blaKPC genes are marked by blue (KPC-2) or pink (KPC-3) circles. An insertion in the pKPC-39c plasmid is black. Non-KPC plasmids are gray. Selected plasmids are labeled with their size in kilobases. E. cloacae and K. pneumoniae isolates are orange and blue, respectively.
Rebecca A. Weingarten et al. mBio 2018; doi: /mBio