| Summary: | Antibiotic resistant Escherichia coli cases are increasing high
especially in Southeast Asia. Illegal use of the antibiotic in the aquaculture
farming may become the culprit of the outbreak and spread into environmental
source. A study was conducted to: 1) detect the chloramphenicol (CAL)-resistant
gene in E. coli isolated from three aquaculture farms and six
rivers of northwestern Borneo and 2) investigate the correlation between
cat gene with five common antibiotics used. Isolation of
E. coli was done on Eosin methylene blue agar and
characterized using indole, methyl red, Voges-Proskauer, citrate tests.
E. coli isolates were subsequently tested for their
susceptibility to five antibiotics commonly used in aqua-farming. The
CAL-resistant E. coli were further analyzed for the presence of
resistant genes (cat I, cat II,
cat III, cat IV) using multiplex
polymerase chain reaction. 42 bacterial colonies were isolated from a total of
80 individual water samples, 34 of which were identified as E.
coli. Result showed 85.3% of the E. coli
isolates were resistant to amoxicillin, 35.3% were resistant to
tetracycline, 29.4% were resistant to CAL, 17.6% were resistant to
nitrofurantoin and 8.8% were resistant to nalidixic acid. All of the 10
CAL resistant E. coli isolateswere detected with
cat II genes; five isolates detected with
cat IV genes; three isolates detected with
cat III genes; and another two detected with
cat I genes. Pearson correlation coefficient shows highly
significant relationship between resistance pattern of CAL with amoxicillin; and
CAL with tetracycline. Our findings provide the supplementary information of the
CAL resistance gene distribution, thereby improving our understanding of the
potential risk of antibiotic resistance underlying within this microbial
ecosystem.
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