Our results revealed that the A1401G mutation was present in 21 of 29 KM-resistant clinical strains, and no other rrs mutations were identified (Table 1). Almost all of these strains (20 out of 21) had MICs >64 μg/ml for both AK and KM while they showed broad MICs ranging from 4 to 64 μg/ml for see more CAP. This is consistent

with previous studies reporting that the rrs A1401G mutation is the most common mechanism of KM resistance and correlates with high-level resistance [21, 31, 32]. In addition, this mutation also confers cross-resistance to CAP [31]. The eight KM-resistant strains lacking the rrs mutation showed high-level resistance to KM (MIC >64 μg/ml), but five of them had a lower MIC for AK (MIC of 8 μg/ml), indicating that other resistance determinants are involved in their resistance

phenotype. Investigation of other reported resistance mechanisms revealed that five of them had mutations in the promoter region of the eis gene, which encodes an aminoglycoside acetyltransferase (Table 1). This aminoglycoside acetyltransferase (Eis) catalyzes the transfer of an acetyl group from acetyl-coenzyme A to an amine group of aminoglycoside. It has been reported that Eis of M. tuberculosis learn more shows a multiacetylation capability at the 2′-, 3- or 6′ positions of aminoglycoside GDC-0994 antibiotics, resulting in an inactivation of many aminoglycoside antibiotics, including neamine, hygromycin, kanamycin, and amikacin [33]. In this study, all five strains harboring eis promoter mutations showed high-level KM resistance but low-level resistance to AK. The most

identified mutation was C-14 T (4 of 5 strains). These mutations and other eis mutations, such as G-6 T, G-10A, C-12 T, A-13G and C-15 T, have been previously shown to be associated with KM resistance [14, 16, 17]. Zaunbrecher et al. (2009) have reported that the major eis promoter mutations were G-10A and C-14 T [14]. Overexpression of eis resulting from the C-14 T mutation caused the highest levels of eis transcript, followed by G-37 T, G-10A, C-12 T and A-13G mutations [14]. In contrast to the previous study indicating that overexpression of eis confers 17-DMAG (Alvespimycin) HCl low-level resistance to KM [14], our results revealed that the strains harboring eis mutation expressed high-level resistance to KM. One possible explanation is that these strains have additional unknown mechanisms contributing to their KM resistance, and these generate high-level resistance in combination with the eis mutation. Other resistance determinants that are thought to be involved in resistance to AK, KM, and other structurally unrelated aminoglycosides (i.e., streptomycin) were also investigated in this study. The Tap protein is a putative multidrug efflux pump that was originally described in M. fortuitum [18]. Rv1258c encodes the homologous Tap protein in M. tuberculosis.