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Abstract

is an important nosocomial pathogen causing high infections and morbidity among affected individuals, and most studies focus on nosocomial strains. However, can also be isolated from healthy community individuals. This study compared the pathogenicity of hospital and community isolates using and human cell cultures. The insect model, , and HeLa cell line were used with ten isolates (six community and four hospital isolates from Segamat, Malaysia). killing assays and HeLa cell adherence, invasion and cytotoxicity assays were performed to investigate the virulence and invasion potential of the isolates. Out of the ten isolates investigated, three community and two hospital isolates were found to be highly virulent in the infection model, killing 100% of larvae within 96 h. These strains were also found to be invasive and have significant cytotoxicity in HeLa cells. Our study revealed that community- and hospital-isolated could be equally virulent judged by both model systems. Undoubtedly, besides hospital settings, the presence of highly virulent in community reservoirs poses a significant public health risk and requires additional investigation.

Funding
This study was supported by the:
  • Monash Malaysia Strategic Large Grant Scheme 2017 (Award LG-2017–01-SCI)
    • Principal Award Recipient: SadequrRahman
  • Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS) from the Ministry of Education (MOE) Malaysia (Award FRGS/1/2019/SKK01/MUSM/01/1)
    • Principal Award Recipient: SadequrRahman
  • This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. This article was made open access via a Publish and Read agreement between the Microbiology Society and the corresponding author’s institution.
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/content/journal/acmi/10.1099/acmi.0.000858.v3
2025-02-14
2026-02-10

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