Vet World   Vol.15   February-2022  Article-32

Development of multidrug-resistant Escherichia coli in some Egyptian veterinary farms

Background and Aim: Food of animal origin is considered a major source of foodborne diseases. In this context, multidrug-resistant (MDR) Escherichia coli pose a serious hazard to public health due to the consumption of food contaminated with antibiotics that are used for the treatment of various bacterial infections in farm animals. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the effect of the excessive use of antibiotics on the development of MDR E. coli strains in Egyptian poultry, dairy, and meat farms.

Materials and Methods: A total of 1225 samples were randomly collected from poultry, dairy, and meat products intended for human consumption in different governorates. E. coli were isolated from the collected samples and subjected to biochemical identification and antibiotic sensitivity tests with antibiotics commonly used in human and veterinary medicine. Then, amoxicillin (AML)- and oxytetracycline (OT)-resistant E. coli isolates were subjected to a polymerase chain reaction test to detect the blaTEM and tetA genes, respectively.

Results: E. coli were isolated from 132 out of 350, 148 out of 350, 177 out of 350, and 35 out of 175 poultry, milk, meat, and human samples, respectively. Most of the isolates expressed multidrug resistance, and resistance genes (blaTEM and tetA) were detected in all the tested AML- and OT-resistant E. coli isolates.

Conclusion: Foods of animal origin may represent a source of MDR E. coli, which can be a major threat to public health. Keywords: Escherichia coli, food of animal origin, misuse of antibiotics, multidrug resistance, poultry.

Keywords: Escherichia coli, food of animal origin, misuse of antibiotics, multidrug resistance, poultry.

How to cite this article: Samy AA, Mansour AS, Khalaf DD, Khairy EA (2022) Development of multidrug-resistant Escherichia coli in some Egyptian veterinary farms, Veterinary World, 15(2): 488-495.

Received: 17-11-2021  Accepted: 20-01-2022     Published online: 27-02-2022

Corresponding author: Asmaa S. Mansour   E-mail: asmaasami85@yahoo.com

DOI: 10.14202/vetworld.2022.488-495

Copyright: Samy, et al. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http:// creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.