Multi-Drug Resistance in Salmonella enterica: Efflux Mechanisms and Their Relationships with the Development of Chromosomal Resistance Gene Clusters

Bacterial drug resistance represents one of the most crucial problems in present day antibacterial chemotherapy. Of particular concern to public health is the continuing worldwide epidemic spread of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium phage type DT104 harbouring a genomic island called Salmonella genomic island I (SGI-1). This island contains an antibiotic gene cluster conferring resistance to ampicillin, chloramphenicol, florfenicol, streptomycin, sulfonamides and tetracyclines. These resistance genes are assembled in a mosaic pattern, indicative of several independent recombinational events. The mobility of SGI-1 coupled with the ability of various antibiotic resistance genes to be integrated and lost from the chromosomal resistance locus allows for the transfer of stable antibiotic resistance to most of the commonly used antibiotics and adaptation to new antibiotic challenges. This, coupled with the incidence of increasing fluoroquinolone resistance in these strains increases the risk of therapeutic failure in cases of life-threatening salmonellosis. Fluoroquinolone resistance has largely been attributed to mutations occurring in the genes coding for intracellular targets of these drugs. However, efflux by the AcrAB-TolC multi-drug efflux pump has recently been shown to directly contribute to fluoroquinolone resistance. Furthermore, the resistance to chloramphenicol-florfenicol and tetracyclines in DT104 isolates, is due to interaction between specific transporters for these antibiotics encoded by genes mapping to the SGI-1 and the AcrAB-TolC tripartite efflux pump. The potential for the use of efflux pump inhibitors to restore therapeutic efficacy to fluoroquinolones and other antibiotics offers an exciting developmental area for drug discovery.