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.