Antimicrobial susceptibility patterns of Brazilian Haemophilus parasuis field isolates

12 p.Haemophilus parasuis is the etiological agent of Glässer’s disease (GD), an ubiquitous infection of swine characterized by systemic fibrinous polyserositis, polyarthritis and meningitis. Intensive use of antimicrobial agents in swine husbandries during the last years triggered the development of antibiotic resistances in bacterial pathogens. Thus, regular susceptibility testing is crucial to ensure efficacy of different antimicrobial agents to this porcine pathogen. In this study, 50 clinical isolates from South Brazilian pig herds were characterized and analyzed for their susceptibility to commonly used antibiotic. The identification and typing of clinical isolates was carried out by a modified indirect hemagglutination assay combined with a multiplex PCR. The susceptibility of each isolate was analyzed by broth microdilution method against a panel of antimicrobial compounds. We found that field isolates are highly resistance to gentamycin, bacitracin, lincomycin and tiamulin, but sensitive to ampicillin, clindamycin, neomycin, penicillin, danofloxacin and enrofloxacin. Furthermore, an individual susceptibility analysis indicated that enrofloxacin is effective to treat clinical isolates with the exception of those classified as serovarS

Altered indirect hemagglutination method for easy serotyping of Haemophilus parasuis

P. 15-21Glässer’s disease is an emergent bacterial disease that affects swine husbandries worldwide causing important economic losses. The aetiological agent, Haemophilus parasuis, is currently divided in fifteen serovars but an increasing number of non-typeable serovars have been reported. Indirect hemagglutination (IHA) is indicated as a serotyping method for H. parasuis. In the present study, we describe an additional step that aims to work around a possible obstacle in the original protocol that may compromise the outcome of this assay. We observed that the choice of anticoagulant for blood collection influences and/or impairs spontaneous adsorption of H. parasuis antigens on sheep red blood cells (SRBCs). However, regardless of the anticoagulant used, chemical treatment of SRBCs with tannic acid induces a stable antigen adsorption (sensitization step). The addition of 1% BSA to SRBCs washing buffer and to antisera dilution augments IHA specificity. Tannic acid treated SRBCs combined with thermo-resistant H. parasuis antigens increases the assay resolution. Thus, our results demonstrate an improvement in the technique of H. parasuis serotyping that will prove valuable to understand Glässer’s disease epidemiology and to better characterize serovars involved in outbreaksS