Abstract:
Klebsiella pneumoniae found as a common flora in intestinal tract, mouth and skin of
humans do not cause disease. However, when the bacterium founds other parts of the body,
it is associated with many different types of human disease. K. pneumoniae is one of the
pathogen that contains a variety of resistance genes. The objective of this study was to
detect tetA and tetB resistance genes in K. pneumoniae. Experimental study was conducted
on a totality of 50 K. pneumoniae isolates from different specimens of patients at Gondar
University hospital from November, 2014 to April, 2016. The Klebsiella pneumoniae
genomic DNA was isolated by phenol chloroform method. PCR was performed to detect
tetA and tetB genes by specific pair of primers. K. pneumoniae showed resistance against
Amoxicillin 50(100%), followed by Streptomycin 23 (60%). From total, forty (80%) of K.
pneumonia isolates were multidrug resistance which showed a resistance to two or more
antibiotics. The occurrence of the genes tetA and tetB were 2 (4%) and 1(2%) for tetA tetB
genes, respectively. The presence of multidrug resistance K. pneumoniae strains that
harbor resistance genes (tetA and tetB), might be serving as indicators for the role of these
genes in antibiotic resistance.
Key words: Klebsiella pneumoniae, resistance, tetA, tetB, tetracycline
