Prevalence of ESBLs among E.coli and K.pneumoniae isolates from Mulago National Referral Hospital

Abstract

Background; Enterobacteriaceae are common causes of health care associated and community acquired infections yet resistance to the commonly used antibiotics for the infections is increasing. Knowledge about the numbers of resistant organisms is required to control the infections caused by these organisms yet it's scarce in low and middle income countries. So we conducted this study in order to add to the existing knowledge which would be used in future in case there is need of better policies against antimicrobial resistance. Methodology; Klebsiella pneumoniae and E.coli were isolated by streaking the samples on MacConkey agar.Antibiotic susceptibility was performed using disc diffusion method on Muller Hinton agar. The DNA was isolated by boiling lysis. The desired DNA sequences were then amplified with primers for the genes required using a conventional PCR. The PCR products were then analyzed by gel electrophoresis. Results;Among the 30 samples, 21 samples were susceptible to all the antibiotics used during the testing and 9 samples were resistant to at least one of the antibiotics used during the testing.Resistance against Ampicillin was the highest. Resistance against Ceftazidime, Cefuroxime, Ceftriaxone and Cefotaxime was moderate. Isolates were highly sensitive to Imipenem. 26.67% (8) of the isolates were ESBL producers while 73.33% (22) isolates were non producers.23.33% (7) of the isolates were positive for CTXM gene while 13.33% (4) of the isolates were positive for TEM gene while 10% (3) of the isolates were positive for both CTX M and TEM genes.