Abstract

Members of the Enterobacteriaceae family cause serious health problems of plants, animals and humans. Although Ciprofloxacin is known to be a very effective and a commonly used drug in the treatment of Enterobacteriaceae infections, an increasing trend of resistance to the drug has been noted. Consequently this resistance leads to failure in treatment, increased morbidity, mortality and cost of health care. This work sought to determine the prevalence of Ciprofloxacin resistance in clinical isolates of some selected members of the Enterobacteriaceae family, and to determine the general degree of susceptibility of some enterobacterial isolates to some other antibiotics. Fifty (50) clinical enterobacterial isolates of Esherichia coli (30), Enterobacter spp. (10) and Proteus spp. (10) were sampled from Agu Hospital using purposive sampling technique and subjected to antimicrobial susceptibility test using the agar disc diffusion technique. Prevalence of Ciprofloxacin resistance among the isolates was 16% (8). Three (10%) E. coli, 4 (40%) Enterobacter spp. and 1 (10%) Proteus spp. were resistant to Ciprofloxacin. High susceptibility to Ciprofloxacin-resistant isolates was demonstrated with Ampicillin (87.5%), to a lesser degree 62.5% with Gentamicin and Nalidixic acid and moderately 50.0% for Peflacine. This suggests that frequent exposure to antibiotics is a major predisposing factor for resistance and there are indications of their spread among other species other thanE. coli, Enterobacter and Proteus. This study confirmed that antibiotic-resistant strains ofEnterobacteriaceae are prevalent among individuals attending Agu Hospital in Nasarawa State, Nigeria.   

Key words: Ciprofloxacin, resistance, Enterobacteriaceae, antibiotics