Abstract

Aims: The present study aimed to evaluate Iron uptake protein-related genes in clinical and environmental Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates. Background: Klebsiella pneumoniae as an opportunistic pathogen cause infections in immunocompromised patients. Iron uptake systems play an important role in the pathogenesis of Klebsiella pneumonia. Objectives: This study was designed to investigate the prevalence of iron uptake coding genes among isolates of Klebsiella pneumonia. Materials and Methods: A total of 300 isolates of Klebsiella pneumonia including 150 clinical isolates and 150 environmental isolates were selected. Finally, the frequency of iroN, iucD, kfuA,hmuR, and ybt yHPI genes were detected by PCR method. Results: The frequency of kfuA, iucD, iroN, yHPI in clinical isolates were 33.3%, 16.7%, 24.7%, 15.3%, respectively and these genes among environmental isolates were 20.7%, 6%, 49.3% and 0.7%, respectively. Among the clinical isolates, the most frequency genes were kfuA gene 50 isolates and after that iroN 37 isolates, iucD 25 isolates and yHPI 23 isolates, the genes with the most frequency among environmental isolates were iroN gene 74 isolates and following that kfuA 31 isolates, iucD 9 isolates and yHPI 1 isolate. No hmuR positive samples among all clinical or environmental isolates were found. Conclusion: The result of this study showed that because of the high frequency of ferric iron system coding gene kfu among clinical isolates, this system might play an important role in the survival of bacteria against its host. © 2020 Elhaki et al.