Prevalence of antimicrobial resistant Escherichia coli strains isolated from poultry, Meghalaya, India

The frequent use of antimicrobial has rendered the risk of increase in resistance against E. coli. The objective of this study was to observe the resistance pattern against most commonly used drugs. A total of 92 Escherichia coli were isolated from tissues of diseased poultry birds. The antibiotic resistance-susceptibility profiles were conducted by standardized disc diffusion following CLSI method. Test for resistance to 14 antimicrobial agents were conducted. The most frequently encountered form of resistance in all the samples were to sulphafurazole (98.91%) trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (96.73%), colistin (88.04%), tetracycline (86.95%), co-trimoxazole (76.08%), enrofloxacin (75%) and ampicillin (70.65%). 67 (72.82%) of the isolates showed resistance to more than three antimicrobial classes. The high percentage of multi-drug resistance prevailing among the samples was mainly against sulphonamides, tetracycline and fluoroquinolones. Therefore, the increase in resistance against colistin, sulphonamides and fluoroquinolones which were considered highly effective against E. coli was highly notable.