Diversity of plasmids responsible for multiple resistance in Klebsiella serotype K2.

Klebsiella of capsular type K2 were investigated to find out whether a single epidemic clone was the source of many outbreaks of infection in different hospitals, in different areas over a period of five years. The klebsiellas studied were found to be very similar; they were of the same biotype, had similar klebecin sensitivity patterns and carried multiple drug-resistance plasmids; however, characterization of these plasmids showed that they were heterogeneous. Thus there was not a single epidemic bacterial clone.