Prevalence of fluoroquinolone resistance in salmonella species from clinical isolates at Makerere University College of Health Sciences clinical microbiology laboratory.

Abstract

Background. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a rapidly spreading health problem across the world with the estimated annual deaths of 700,000 people due to infections by drug resistant strains of common bacterial infections. However, there is limited data on the prevalence of fluoroquinolone resistance in Uganda. Thus our study used available information on salmonella species isolated from clinical isolates to determine the prevalence of fluoroquinolone resistance in salmonella species from clinical isolates at Makerere university college of health sciences clinical microbiology laboratory.in bacteriology laboratory. We used data available on samples collected and analysed between January 2015- December 2020.

Methods: This was a retrospective study involving Laboratory records of blood and stool culture results from January 2015 to December 2020. We designed data abstraction tool and used it collect data for fluoroquinolone resistance in Salmonella species obtained at the Clinical microbiology laboratory from the database during the study period. The data collected, was entered and cleaned in Microsoft excel 2013 spread sheet and exported to STATA software for analysis. Results: A total of 24592 blood and 374 stool culture records for the period between January2015- December 2020 were obtained from Clinical microbiology laboratory. These were analyzed to determine the prevalence of AMR and Antimicrobial susceptibility patterns of Fluoroquinolone to Salmonella species. Of the 27364 records for blood and stool culture positive results for Salmonella species was 134 giving a prevalence of 0.49%. Ciprofloxacin and Nalidixic acid, were the only quinolones available for our study. Thus the prevalence of fluoroquinolone resistance (Ciprofloxacin and Nalidixic) among Salmonella species was 5(3.73%) and 58(43.28) % respectively.

Conclusion We found a higher level of antimicrobial resistance to Nalidixic compared to Ciprofloxacin. The high sensitivity of Salmonella to ciprofloxacin suggests such a drug needs to be protected against emergence of resistant strains. Thus our study revealed that Ciprofloxacin was the most effective drug against Salmonella species. We therefore, recommend proper selection of fluoroquinolones for the treatment of salmonella infections in humans.