PREVALENCE AND ANTIBIOTIC SUSCEPTIBILITY PROFILE OF Enterococcus SPECIES ISOLATED FROM URINE SAMPLES OF HOSPITAL PATIENTS IN MINNA, NIGERIA

Abstract

ABSTRACT Enterococci are responsible for serious diseases such as bacteraemia and urinary tract infections. The ability of enterococci to cause such diseases is due to acquisition of certain virulence factors such as haemolysin, gelatinase and enterococcus surface protein. The aim of this study was to investigate Enterococcus spp as agents of urinary tract infections among hospital patients in Minna, Niger State, Nigeria. Two hundred and thirty (230) urine samples collected from patients were inoculated on CLED agar. Isolates were further confirmed on Mackonkey agar. The isolates were identified based on biochemical and molecular techniques. The prevalence of enterococcus in the urine samples overall was 13.04 %. The Enterococcus species identified were Enterococcus faecalis (10.43 %), Enterococcus asini (0.435 %), Enterococcus casseliflavus (0.87 %), Enterococcus durans (0.87 %) and Enterococcus melodaratus (0.435 %). Susceptibility and degree of resistance of the isolates to various antibiotics were determined using the disc diffusion method. The species were tested against eleven (11) antibiotics. It was observed that the species E. faecalis had the highest susceptibility to Levofloxacin (100 %), Gentamicin (70.83 %), and Ciprofloxacin (62.5 %). High level of resistance of E. faecalis was seen against Vancomycin (100 %), Amoxicillin (87.5 %), Streptomycin (91.67 %), Norfloxacin (87.5 %), Ampiclox (79.16 %) and Rifampin (58.33 %). E. faecalis was 36.7 % resistant and 36.7 % susceptible to Chloramphenicol. Other species such as E. casseliflavus, E. durans, and E. asini were all susceptible to Chloramphenicol with the exemption of E. malodaratus which was completely resistant to Chloramphenicol. All species were resistant to Vancomycin, Amoxicillin, and Norfloxacin except E. faecalis which had 10 % sensitivity to Norfloxacin. Among the species, only E. malodaratus was susceptible to Streptomycin and E. faecalis with 6.7 % sensitivity. Out of the two species of E. durans and E. casseliflavus, specie from each was resistant to Levofloxacin. Multidrug resistance (MDR) was observed in all isolates (100 %).Among the five isolates analyzed using molecular techniques, E10, E11, E25, and E27 revealed to be E. faecalis which is similar to the biochemical results. Although result from the Blast file for E20 showed E. faecalis to have the highest percentage identity (97.86 %) followed by E. durans (96.07 %), E20 was identified to be E. durans based on biochemical test due to the isolate’s inability to ferment mannitol, sorbitol, xylose and rhamnose, which are the characteristics that distinguish E. durans from other Enterococcus species. Increase of antibiotic resistant bacteria is a severe health problem worldwide. The increase of drug resistant bacteria limits the therapeutic solutions to patients with enterococcal infections and lead to transmission of resistant genes among bacteria.