Investigation of the effectiveness of our klebsiella pneumoniae- effective bacteriophage, which we named KPF-6, on klebsiella species grown in blood cultures

Klebsiella species, a member of the Enterobacteriaceae family, is a pathogen that causes community and hospital-acquired-infections. Their ability to develop rapid resistance to most antibacterial agents in use threatens the health benefits achieved with antibiotics. Therefore, alternative treatment methods are needed. Bacteriophages are viruses that infect and kill the bacteria they target. Phage therapy has potential to infections with resistant bacteria as an alternative to antibiotics. In this study, effectiveness of KPF-6 specific to multi-drug-resistant K,pneumoniae isolated from wastewater in a previous study was investigated against total of 100 Klebsiella isolates, 48 of which were K,pneumoniae and 52 of were Klebsiella spp, isolated from blood culture samples.Spot test method was used for this purpose. Klebsiella isolates, the resistance rate for carbapenems was 67% on average and for cephalosporins it was 84%.These rates are 89.58% on average in our carbapenem-resistance-K.pneumoniae isolates and Klebsiella spp isolates, the average was 46.15%. The average rate for cephalosporin-resistant K.pneumoniae was 93.75%, Klebsiella spp was 75%. Our isolates also had high resistance rates to other tested aminoglycosides, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole and ciprofloxacin. KPF-6 was found to be 74% effective against Klebsiella isolates. Efficacy rates for K.pneumoniae and Klebsiella spp., it was determined as 79.16% and 69.23% respectively. This rate was found 71.6% for carbapenem-resistant isolates. Phage activity was 68.75% in carbapenem-resistant-K.pneumoniae isolates and Klebsiella spp was 31.25% in isolates.KPF-6 phage was found effective in 69.4% of Klebsiella isolates cephalosporin-resistant.This rate was 60.34% in cephalosporin-resistant-K.pneumoniae isolates 60.34%, Klebsiella spp was detected as 39.65%. KPF-6 was inactive against 26%of Klebsiella isolates. Of the phage-inactive carbapenem-resistant isolates, 9(47.36%) were K.pneumoniae and 10(52.63%) were Klebsiella spp. We determined that KPF-6, targeting multidrug-resistant clinical isolates of K.pneumoniae, has high lytic-activity and may have therapeutic potential. It offers a promising avenue as an alternative treatment strategy to combat infections caused by other challenging pathogens such as multidrug-resistant-K,pneumoniae.