TITLE:
Antimicrobial Susceptibility Profiles among Escherichia coli Strains Isolated from Athi River Water in Machakos County, Kenya
AUTHORS:
Peris Wambugu, Michael Habtu, Phyllis Impwi, Viviene Matiru, John Kiiru
KEYWORDS:
Antimicrobials, Athi River, E. coli, Multi-Drug Resistance, Susceptibility Test
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Microbiology,
Vol.5 No.10,
September
25,
2015
ABSTRACT: Antimicrobial use in agriculture, livestock and human health has
increased over the years leading to the increase in antimicrobial resistance that
can also find its way to the aquatic environment. Rivers can act as reservoirs
of highly resistant strains and facilitate the dissemination of multidrug
resistant (MDR) strains to animals and humans using water. A total of 318 water
samples were collected from six different sampling points along Athi River and E. coli isolates were subjected to
Kirby-Bauer diffusion method for antimicrobial susceptibility testing. The
total mean coliform count of the sampled sites was 2.7 × 104 (cfu/mL). E. coli isolates were most resistant
to ampicillin (63.8%) and most susceptible to gentamicin (99.4%). MDR strains
(resistance to ≥3 classes of antibiotics) accounted for 65.4% of all the
isolates. The site recorded to have human industrial and agricultural zone
activities had strains that were significantly more resistant to ampicillin,
cefoxitin, amoxicillin/clavulanic acid (P ≤ 0.05) than isolates from the
section of the river traversing virgin land and land with minimum human activities.
This study indicates that E. coli strains isolated from Athi River were highly MDR and most resistant to some
antimicrobial classes (ampicillin and cefoxitin) which constitute a potential
risk to human and animal health.