Using Probiotics, Antibiotics and their Combinations to Eradicate Biofilms Formed by Four Pathogenic Klebsiella Pneumoniae Strains

Abstract

Klebsiella pneumoniae is an opportunistic pathogen leading to nosocomial infections with production of
biofilm. In the present study, 73 samples were collected from patients of different ages and both genders
suffering from burn and wound injury that referred to four Hospitals in Baghdad from Aug. to Nov. 2019.
All Klebsiella isolates were subjected to the primary identification; first by describing colonies grown on
MacConkey agar and second microscopically after Gram staining of their cells. Then the isolates were
identified by Vitek 2 system which insured that 60 of the isolates were found to belong to Klebsiella
pneumoniae. All identified isolates were screened for ability to produce biofilm by using the Microtiter
plate assay and the Congo red agar method, and the results showed that only 4 isolates (3 of wounds and
1of burns) were able to form biofilms. For the importance of these four isolates as the only ones able to
produce biofilm, they were subjected to the 16S rRNA gene amplification test by using PCR technique.
Results insured that they are new strains Klebsiella pneumoniae to be discovered for the first time in this
study. They were verified and documented by the “National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI)”
and registered as; KPWIQ25, KPWIQ49, KPWIQ51 and KPBIQ19 strains of Klebsiella pneumoniae. When
the probiotic filtrates and antibiotics combination were investigated for eradication of biofilms formed by
the four pathogenic strains, results showed that such combinations had great efficiency in the eradication.