Clinical Microbiology and Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. 2017; 19(2):153-159
To assess regional differences in antimicrobial susceptibility of N. gonorrhoeae in the Russian Federation.
A total of 365 N. gonorrhoeae strains were isolated over the period of 2015-2016 in Arkhangelsk, Astrakhan, Bryansk, Kaluga, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Ryazan, Tomsk regions, Republic of Tatarstan and Chuvashiya Republic. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing was performed by agar dilution method and assessed according to MUK 4.2.1890-04 criteria using WHONET software (v5.4). Molecular typing was performed according to the NG-MAST protocol.
Russian isolates of N. gonorrhoeae were found to be highly susceptible to ceftriaxone and spectinomycin (100% and 98.9%, respectively) along with significantly different susceptibility to benzylpenicillin, tetracycline, ciprofloxacin, and azithromycin in several regions. Regional differences included a high prevalence of isolates susceptible to all of the antimicrobials tested in Chuvashiya (54.0%), Kaluga (64.1%) and Tomsk (77.8%) regions; in contrast, multidrug resistant isolates were the most common in Bryansk (30.4%) and Ryazan (46.2%) regions. Molecular typing showed a significant diversity of the current Russian population of N. gonorrhoeae. Specifically, the most prevalent sequence types were ST 807, 1993, 5714, which were found in most regions and susceptible to all of the antimicrobials tested. Multidrug resistant ST 4707, 12096, 14826 were less frequent and associated with the specific region of the Russian Federation.
The significant heterogeneity of the Russian population of N. gonorrhoeae is a rationale for the development of regional supplements to the national list of antimicrobials recommended for the treatment of gonococcal infections. It requires a representativeness of the regional N. gonorrhoeae samples to be increased, as well as their antimicrobial susceptibility testing to be performed on a regular basis.