Abstract

The study was aimed at determining the prevalence and antibacterial susceptibility of bacterial strains isolated from the respiratory tract of patients attending the major hospital in Yola, Nigeria. The study was carried out between January, 2008 - June, 2009. Sputum, throat and mouth specimens were collected and cultured on the appropriate bacteriological media. Bacterial isolates were identified by standard biochemical tests. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing was performed according to Clinical and Laboratory Standard Institute (CLSI) guidelines. Of the samples analyzed, some 232 species of various bacteria were isolated, giving a prevalence rate of 92.8%. This consisted of 49.1% from male patients and 50.9% from females. The bacteria isolated from the samples included  Streptococcus pyogens (22.4%),Streptococcus pneumoniae (21.6%), Staphylococcus aureus (19.0%), Klebsiella pneumoniae (11.2%), and Haemophilus influenza (10.3%), Proteus mirabilis (8.6%) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (6.9%) in order of ranking. All the isolates were susceptible to ciprofloxacin, ofloxacin and ceftriazone, moderately susceptible to chloramphenicol, erythromycin, colistin, nitrofurantoin and nalidixic acid and resistant to gentamycin, ampicillin, tetracycline, co-trimoxazole, streptomycin and penicillin. S. aureus was the most susceptible amongst the isolates. Penicillin had the highest resistance to all the isolates. Most of the isolates were displayed by multi-drug resistance with P. aeruginosa and H. influenzae showing the highest number of multi-drug resistance to most of the antibiotics except the fluoroquinolones. Although, multi-drug resistant strains of organisms were identified, ciprofloxacin, ofloxacin and ceftriazone are recommended as antibiotics of choice against the pathogens. These findings have clinical and epidemiological significance.

Key words: Prevalence, susceptibility, antibiotic resistance, multi-drug resistance, fluoroquinolones, Yola.