Identification and characterization of cephalosporin-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae by SERS: Insights into antimicrobial resistance patterns.

The infectious bacteria, K. pneumoniae has broken another defence line by showing resistance to cephalosporin antibiotics, due to presence of extended-spectrum lactamases ESBL resistance genes. Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is used to characterize third generation cephalosporin resistant and susceptible K. pneumoniae strains for the purpose of identification of their characteristic SERS spectral features. For this, the silver nanoparticles (Ag-NPs) are used as a SERS substrate. The SERS spectral fingerprints of K. pneumoniae strains, linked directly or indirectly to resistance development against third generation cephalosporins, were differentiated by analyzing their SERS spectral data with the help of support vector machines (SVM), principal component analysis (PCA), and partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA). This can result in the effective recognition, differentiation and distinction of third generation cephalosporin resistant and susceptible strains of K. pneumonia bacteria which is considered crucial for selecting suitable antibiotic treatment for infections.