Background: Bacteria resistance to some commonly available antimicrobial agents continues to remain a significant public health concern worldwide. In veterinary medicine resistance to multiple antimicrobials was found more often in Escherichia coli from boiler chickens compared to E. coli from other meat producing animals.
Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of multidrug-resistant E. coli isolated from broiler chickens in western Algeria.
Methods: In this study, 86 samples of broiler chickens were collected from many poultry breedings situated in six geographic areas of western Algeria, from April to September 2016. After isolates identification, antibiotic susceptibility testing was performed by disk-diffusion method on Mueller- Hinton agar. The isolates were tested against a panel of 14 antimicrobials commonly used in veterinary and human medicine. Results were interpreted according to Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute guidelines.
Results: Our results revealed a high level of resistance to nalidixic acid (94,18%), tetracyclin (90,69%), ampicillin (86,04%), neomycin (83,72%), enrofloxacin (83,72%), trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazol (79,06%), norfloxacin (73,25%).There were moderate levels of resistance to cephalotin (69,76%) and amoxicillin-clavulanic acid (52.32%). Low levels of resistance to clronphenycol (23,25%), colistin(17,44%), gentamicin(15,11%) and cefotaxim(9.30%) were observed in this study. All strains were multi-drug resistant and more than half (58.13%) of the isolates were resistant to eight antibiotics.
Conclusions: These findings suggest the need for the introduction of surveillance programs in Algeria to monitor antimicrobial resistance in pathogenic bacteria that could be potentially transmitted to humans from animal food.