Increase prevalence of multi-resistant enteric bacteria isolates encoded with high mobile R-plasmid
causing enteric infections was examined among the community residents in Abeokuta, Nigeria.
Random cluster sampling of 251 fecal samples of community residents were cultured for enteric
bacteria and biotyped. Disc diffusion and Micro-broth dilution assay were used to determine antibiotic
susceptibility while R-plasmid was profiled with photo-gel documentation. Antibiotic resistance
relatedness was detected using DendroUPGMA construction utility software. Of all isolates obtained,
31.3% were Escherichia coli Klebsiella oxytoca (19.5%), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (15.3%) and
Shigella specie (2.0%). Significant high rate of 62.6% showed resistant to Cefuroxime, 61.6% to
Ampicillin and Augmentin (54.2%) while 44.7%, 38.9% and 33.9% resist Cotrimoxazole,
Ciprofloxacin and Tetracycline respectively at MIC >16 μg/ml (p= 0.004). Only 54.1% harboured
high molecular weight R-plasmid (>11.0kbp) and 2.7% having <5kbp R-plasmid weight. Two distinct
clusters revealed significant multi-antibiotic resistant relatedness. Cluster A enteric isolates harboured
similar R-plasmid of only one bands with high molecular weight more than 11kbp while Cluster B
divided into subgroup a and subgroup b comprising different enteric species having similar high
molecular weights with high antibiotic resistant expressing more than two plasmid bands showing
computed cophenetic correlation of 0.94. Cluster analysis reveal a related high level multi-antibiotics
resistant enteric bacteria strains among the community residents suggesting a continuous
dissemination and imminent outbreak of resistant enteric pathotypes with resultant epidemic
proportion
