Introduction Pseudomonas aeruginosa is one of the important opportunistic nosocomial pathogens that are increasingly becoming resistant to many drugs including the drugs of last resort, carbapenems, and colistin.

Methods The study involved the examination of clinical isolates of P. aeruginosa recovered from diabetic patients for the presence of acquired genes implied in carbapenem and colistin resistance.

Results A total of 100 clinical isolates from diabetic patients' wound and sputum were investigated for their susceptibility to imipenem and colistin followed by phenotypic assay and resistance gene screening. The study revealed 27 sputum isolates being resistant to imipenem further confirmed by a modified Hodge test and 28 wound isolates were resistant to colistin. The resistant isolates of wound and sputum were found to possess blaOXA-48, blaVIM, mcr-1, and mcr-5 genes. The strains had a coexistence of carbapenem- and colistin-resistant genes.

Conclusion Considering the fact that infection by such resistant isolates in diabetics could be frightening, clinical laboratories must employ rapid diagnostic methods to detect resistance which can aid in the treatment decision-making.

S.S. contributed to the investigation, data curation, writing—original draft, and formal analysis. G.S. contributed to the investigation, formal analysis, and writing—original draft. A.N. and B.J.N. contributed to the formal analysis and writing—original draft. R.P. contributed to the conceptualization, funding acquisition, supervision, and writing—review and editing.

Central Ethics Committee of the NITTE University (NU/CEC/2019/0229)—2019.

Article published online:
26 August 2024

© 2024. The Author(s). This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, permitting unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction so long as the original work is properly cited. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Thieme Medical and Scientific Publishers Pvt. Ltd.
A-12, 2nd Floor, Sector 2, Noida-201301 UP, India