Antimicrobial resistance of major clinical pathogens in South Korea, May 2016 to April 2017: first one-year report from Kor-GLASS

Abstract

The Korean government established an antimicrobial resistance (AMR) surveillance system, compatible with the Global AMR Surveillance System (GLASS): Kor-GLASS. We describe results from the first year of operation of the Kor-GLASS from May 2016 to April 2017, comprising all non-duplicated clinical isolates of major pathogens from blood<i>,</i> urine<i>,</i> faeces and urethral and cervical swabs from six sentinel hospitals. Antimicrobial susceptibility tests were carried out by disk diffusion, Etest, broth microdilution and agar dilution methods. Among 67,803 blood cultures, 3,523 target pathogens were recovered. The predominant bacterial species were <i>Escherichia coli</i> (n = 1,536), <i>Klebsiella pneumoniae</i> (n = 597) and <i>Staphylococcus aureus</i> (n = 584). From 57,477 urine cultures, 6,394 <i>E. coli</i> and 1,097 <i>K. pneumoniae</i> were recovered. Bloodstream infections in inpatients per 10,000 patient-days (10TPD) were highest for cefotaxime-resistant <i>E. coli</i> with 2.1, followed by 1.6 for meticillin-resistant <i>Sta. aureus</i>, 1.1 for imipenem-resistant <i>Acinetobacter baumannii</i>, 0.8 for cefotaxime-resistant <i>K. pneumoniae</i> and 0.4 for vancomycin-resistant <i>Enterococcus faecium</i>. Urinary tract infections in inpatients were 7.7 and 2.1 per 10TPD for cefotaxime-resistant <i>E. coli</i> and <i>K. pneumoniae</i>, respectively. Kor-GLASS generated well-curated surveillance data devoid of collection bias or isolate duplication. A bacterial bank and a database for the collections are under development.