Prevalence and antimicrobial resistance of <i>Pseudomonas aeruginosa</i> recovered from environmental and clinical sources in Benin City, Nigeria

Abstract

The increasing rate of resistance to antimicrobial agents is a public health challenge and Pseudomonas aeruginosa is known to have recalcitrant resistance to several antibiotics. In this study, we characterized antimicrobial resistance and multiple antibiotic resistance (MAR) index of P. aeruginosa of environmental and clinical origin. A total of 240 samples were examined, of which 120 each were of environmental and clinical settings. Bacteriological analysis, antimicrobial sensitivity and MAR were performed on the isolates. The results revealed that of the 120 clinical matrixes evaluated for the presence of P. aeruginosa, 54.16% (65/120) were positive for P. aeruginosa. There were significant differences among the clinical samples (p < 0.05) in prevalence. The highest isolation rate 27.7% was observed in wound samples and the least 10.8% in urine. For environmental samples, 45.83% (55/120) were positive for P. aeruginosa. There was a highly significant difference among the environmental samples (p < 0.01) in prevalence. All positive isolates were resistant to cefuroxime (100%) and amoxicillin (100%). Most were also resistant to nalidixic acid (88%), cotrimoxazole (86%) and ciprofloxacin (85%). There was high significant difference in the resistance patterns of the isolates at p<0.001. All the isolates were multi-resistant revealed by the high MAR index profile. The multi-resistance exhibited by P. aeruginosa further confirms the call for integrated approaches to combat bacterial antibiotic resistance.

Keywords:  Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Antibiotics resistance, Multidrug resistance