Literature regarding multidrug resistant (MDR) carbapenemase-producing Escherichia coli (CPE) recovered from food-producing animals is lacking from Pakistan. Here, we report on the isolation and characterization of MDR-CPE recovered from retail-poultry meat in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pakistan. A total of 101 retail poultry-meat samples were screened for Escherichia coli and tested against 17 different antibiotics through disc diffusion test to define MDRs. MDR isolates were genotyped by PCR for

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... penemase-encoding elements. Finally, integron typing, insertion sequence common region 1 (ISCR1) and its association with carbapenemaseencoding genes was established through PCR. Of the 33 E. coli isolates, 28 (Phylogroup B2=39.2% (11/28), A=32.1 % (9/28) and group D=28.5% (8/28) were MDR displaying resistance to cefotaxime, tetracycline, ampicillin and trimethoprimsulfamethoxazole, while, 96.4, 92.8, 89.2 and 85.7% were also found resistant to colistin-sulphate, enrofloxacin, doxycycline and ciprofloxacin, respectively. The blaVIM was predominantly identified in 8 (28.5%) isolates followed by blaNDM 4/28 (14.2%) and 2 isolates were carrying a combination of blaVIM+blaNDM. Class-1 integron was detected in 21 (75%), class-2 and class-3 integrons were detected in 25% and 7.1%, respectively. ISCR1 element was identified among 11 isolates (39.28%) that was found associated with blaVIM gene among 3 isolates (27.25%) suggesting involvement in its mobilization. We report the incidence of E. coli carrying carbapenemase-encoding genes located on the plasmids carrying integron 1 recovered from retail-poultry-meat in Mardan, Pakistan.