Evaluation of virulence of Klebsiella pneumoniae using zebrafish behavior as a biological indicator.

INTRODUCTION

Klebsiella pneumoniae is one of the common pathogenic bacteria that can cause infections in hospitals and communities and can cause respiratory, urinary, and other multi-system infections. In recent years, the emergence of highly virulent and drug-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae has greatly increased the difficulty of treatment for infection. Clinically, it is very important to accurately judge the virulence of isolated Klebsiella pneumoniae for treatment, but there is no better method to evaluate its virulence.

METHODS

In this study, zebrafish were used as a model organism, and the swimming distance was used as a detection index to identify clinically isolated Klebsiella pneumoniae. In this study, we selected two different strains of Klebsiella pneumoniae, i.e., NTUH-K2044 and ATCC BAA-1705, with known high and low virulence, respectively, to infect zebrafish juveniles and evaluated their behavioral ability according to different bacterial concentrations and different developmental times.

RESULTS

It was found that highly virulent Klebsiella pneumoniae caused a significant decrease in the behavioral ability of zebrafish larvae, while low-virulence Klebsiella pneumoniae had relatively little effect.

CONCLUSIONS

These results indicate that it is entirely feasible to assess the virulence of Klebsiella pneumoniae based on behavioral ability.