Genomic surveillance reveals long-term endemicity and outbreak potential of Klebsiella pneumoniae sequence type 48 in a German hospital and its global context.

Authors

Ngoc Minh Nguyen, Anna Weber, Basil Britto Xavier, Juan Pablo Rodríguez-Ruiz, Axel Kola, Michael Behnke, Christine Geffers, Herman Goossens, Stephan Harbarth, Marc Bonten, Rafael Canton, Petra Gastmeier, Youri Glupczynski, Friederike Maechler, Surbhi Malhotra-Kumar, On Behalf Of The R-Gnosis Wp Starcs Wp And Mistar Wp Study Groups

Published in

Microbial genomics. Volume 12. Issue 7.

Abstract

Klebsiella pneumoniae sequence type 48 (Kp-ST48) is a globally distributed clone linked to antimicrobial resistance (AMR) yet lacks a comprehensive genomic analysis. Here, we investigated the persistence, transmission dynamics and global context of ST48 in a large tertiary hospital in Berlin, Germany. Between 2014 and 2022, 48 surveillance and 15 putative outbreak Kp-ST48 isolates were isolated in a tertiary care, multi-site hospital in Berlin, Germany. Genomic diversity was analysed by short- and long-read sequencing. Additionally, we included 223 publicly available Kp-ST48 genomes from five continents over 40 years (1982-2022) in the phylodynamic analysis. We identified two genetically distinct clades (A and B) within the global Kp-ST48 population. The global spread of Kp-ST48 was driven by clade B, which included all the genomes from the Berlin hospital. Two hospital-specific lineages (1 and 2) were identified with distinct population dynamics. Lineage 2 was transient and linked to a putative outbreak in 2019. Meanwhile, lineage 1 was first detected in 2014 and persisted for over 8 years until 2022, with multiple putative patient-to-patient and indirect transmission events identified. Carbapenem resistance determinants (ompK35/36 mutations, bla _KPC, bla _NDM, bla _OXA-48, bla _VIM) were present in 57% (n=163/286) of genomes, and up to three bla _CTX-M-15 copies were found integrated into chromosomes. Although Kp-ST48 generally did not contain a high number of virulence genes, 19 genomes showed potential for AMR-hypervirulence convergence. This study reveals the endemic persistence with outbreak potentials of Kp-ST48 in a hospital over 8 years, characterized by high genome plasticity. Our results highlight the global distribution of this clone, which warrants continuous surveillance.

PMID:
42474481
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 20 Jul 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.