Multiple antibiotic resistance among Gram-negative bacteria isolated from hospital environment and in-patients

Abstract

A total of three hundred and eighty-nine gram-negative bacteria associated with nosocomical infections
were isolated from the hospital environment, patients and hospital personnel for a period of 18 months in Ado-Ekiti
State Specialist Hospital. Their susceptibility to commonly employed antibiotics and plasmid profiles were
investigated. Clinical specimens were collected from patients with different cases of infections, swabs from inanimate
objects were taken in various wards, and nasal samples of the hospital personnel were analysed. The most prevalent of
the 197 bacterial isolates recorded from the clinical specimens included Pseudomonas aeruginosa 69 (35.0%);
Escherichia coli 47 (23.9%); Klebsiella sp. 27 (13.7%); Kblebsiella pneumoniae 20 (10%) and Salmonella typhi
1(0.5%) being the least. While Pseudomonas aeruginosa 94 (48.9%); Proteus vulgaris 43 (22.3%); E. coli 33 (17.2%)
and Klebsiella sp. 10 (5.2%) were predominant among the 192 isolates recorded from the hospital environment,
Salmonella sp and Citrobacter freuidii 2 (1%) occurred least. 96.4% of clinical and 90.1% of the hospital
environmental isolates were multiple-antibiotic resistant types (MAR). They exhibited multiple resistance to the most
commonly used antibiotics such asampicillin, tetracycline, streptomycin, nalidixic acid, colistin and cotrimoxazole.
Plasmid profile analysis of typical resistant isolates showed DNA fragments which ranged from 4.1 to 53.5 kb among
clinical isolates and less than 12.2 kb among the environmental isolates.
Keywords: Multiple antibiotic resistance; Antibiotic resistant gram-negative bacteria; Antibiotic resistant bacteria in
hospital environment.