Antibiotic and metal resistance among hospital and outdoor strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Phenotypic analyses of antibiotic and metal resistance of a collection of 130 strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa from various outdoor (i.e. soil, water, animals) and hospital (environment, patients, individuals with cystic fibrosis) settings were performed. Resistance was scored according to the origin of the strains and their likely exposure to antibiotics and chemicals. Most of the 76 outdoor strains showed a wild-type antibiotic resistance phenotype, i.e. resistance to minocycline and trimethoprim–sulfamethoxazole. Sixty percent of hospital strains showed a multiresistance phenotype (from 3 to 16 antibiotics) and confirmed that frequent exposure to antibiotics favored selection and maintenance of antibiotic resistance in P. aeruginosa. Twelve percent of outdoor strains naturally exposed to antiseptics and hydrocarbons showed significant resistance profiles, suggesting that chemical contaminants could contribute to selection of antibiotic resistance. For metal resistance, outdoor strains were more frequently resistant to zinc and cadmium, whereas hospital strains were more frequently resistant to mercury and copper. Differences in metal resistance between the 130 strains investigated were not related to previously characterized processes such as those implicating czcA, involved in cadmium, zinc, and cobalt resistance, or copA and copB, involved in copper resistance. Regulatory or new processes were likely to have contributed to the observed variations. Strains showing strong resistance to antibiotics were the least resistant to metals, and inversely. The lack of significant correlations between antibiotic and metal resistance suggests involvement of distinct processes that are rarely co-selected. The effects of the P. aeruginosa collection size and multi-factorial selective pressure on data sets are discussed.