Full Length Research Paper
Abstract
This study was carried out to evaluate the resistant pattern of multi-drug resistant strains of Serratia marcescens associated with HIV/AIDS infected individuals in Nigeria. A total 1709 samples (1323 urine and 406 diarrhea stool) were collected from individuals living with HIV/AIDS over a three year period and screened for plasmid-mediated S. marcescens susceptibility profile to antibiotics. These individuals had been confirmed HIV positive and their CD4 cells enumerated using the Partec cyflow (Partec GmbH, Germany). The CD4 values ranged between 14 and 812 cells/µl of blood. During this period, ninety-four (94) S. marcescens strains were isolated of which 38(40.4%) were from urine samples while 56(59.6%) were from diarrhea stool samples. The resistance patterns of the isolates varied (p<0.05) within all the antibiotics tested. The resistant genes were highly encoded on transferable plasmids with a varied frequency of 2 x 10-2 to 6 x 10-3 per donor cell by conjugation. Eight out of nine of the samples (88.9%) had multiple plasmids with molecular weights range between 1.14 and 6.0 kb. Curing experiment results showed that resistance genes were also chromosomally mediated. This indicates that there is a high antibiotic resistant genes marker among S. marcescens strains in HIV/AIDS individuals in Nigeria.
Key words: Plasmids Borne- Serratia marcescens-HIV/AIDS
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