Development of carbapenem resistance is common in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. This resistance, which is due mainly to alteration of the OprD porin, the specific uptake pathway of carbapenems, may also result from acquisition of foreign genes encoding Ambler class A, class B, or class D B-lactamases. These enzymes able to hydrolyze carbapenems at various degrees. Thus, detection of carbapenemase producers in clinical laboratories is of utmost importance for the determination of appropriate therapeutic schemes and the implementation of infection control measures. In order to improve the detection of carbapenemase producers, various inhibitor-based tests and enzymatic assays (., NP-Carba) have been proposed as a first screening step prior to the use of confirmatory molecular techniques. | Evaluation of a new phenotypic method to screen for OprD-deficient mutant strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa
