Abstract
Bloodstream infection (BSI), caused by Klebsiella pneumoniae, is associated with high morbidity and mortality, where the pks gene cluster plays a major role in their occurrence and prevalence. Information on the prevalence and characteristics of this gene cluster in K. pneumoniae is currently limited in mainland China. We therefore undertook a multicentre longitudinal study which revealed the prevalence, overall, community-onset and hospital-acquired BSI to be 20.5%, 28.3% and 13.0%, respectively. Compared to pks-negative, pks-positive isolates were significantly more susceptible to antimicrobial agents with a low incidence (5.1%) of multidrug-resistance and with infrequent extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL) production. Among pks-positive isolates, ST23 (78/117) and ST65 (20/117) were the dominant sequence types, and the majority harboured virulence genes. Community-onset BSI patients infected with pks-positive isolates had a higher proportion of liver abscesses and a lower proportion of biliary obstructions (P < 0.05). The pks-positive isolates were mostly sporadic in the phylogenetic tree, with a 65.8 and 47.0 average allele difference between Clade 1 and Clade 2, respectively. We concluded that although pks-positive K. pneumoniae were generally susceptible to antimicrobials, the high prevalence of such isolates in community cases and the genotoxicity, merits further investigation.