Prevalence and antimicrobial susceptibility profiles of campylobacter isolated from slaughtered pigs at Wambizzi abattoir in Kampala Uganda

Abstract

Campylobacter is one of the common causes of foodborne diarrheal infections in humans, brought about mostly by the consumption of contaminated chicken followed by pork. The irrational use of antimicrobials as feed additives and prophylactics in livestock has been suggested to be largely responsible for resistance in both animal and human isolates of this zoonotic pathogen. This study aimed to investigate the prevalence and antimicrobial susceptibility profiles of Campylobacter isolated from the caecum of pigs slaughtered at Wambizzi abattoir in Kampala, Uganda. Cecal swab samples were collected from 149 slaughtered pigs that originated from different parts of Uganda. The collected samples were enriched in Exeter Campylobacter broth and isolated in CCCA growth agar under microaerophilic conditions. The identified isolates were subjected to antimicrobial susceptibility testing using the agar disc diffusion method for 7 antibiotics i.e. ciprofloxacin, erythromycin, gentamicin, trimethoprim, tetracycline, chloramphenicol and kanamycin. The overall prevalence of Campylobacter species obtained was 23.5% (95% CI 17.30716 - 31.0520), (n=35/149). The Pearson chi-square test result (χ² (3) = 21.1379, Pr = 0.000) confirmed that there was a statistically significant association between the district of origin and the occurrence of Campylobacter, showing that the prevalence of Campylobacter was not uniformly distributed across the districts. The antimicrobial susceptibility profiles showed that all the isolates were resistant to at least two antibiotics i.e. multidrug resistant. All the isolates were susceptible to ciprofloxacin, chloramphenicol and gentamicin. The highest resistant rates were tetracycline and trimethoprim followed by kanamycin and erythromycin with resistant rates of 59.1% and 22.7% respectively. The findings in this study suggest that targeted interventions and improved biosecurity measures at farm and abattoir levels are essential and that the multidrug resistance observed underscores the need for prudent use of antibiotics in veterinary practice to mitigate the risk of spillover and spread of resistant strains.