Under certain conditions, untreated wastewater is released into the sea discharging pathogenic microorganisms into the marine environment. Therefore, it is very important to monitor seawater for the presence of such microorganisms and legislate roles and penalties to avoid and prevent the dumping of such hazardous bacteria. The present study demonstrates the occurrence and survival of pathogenic bacteria in seawater samples collected from four locations at ALSabah beach, Kuwait bay. A total of 230 bacteria were isolated and identified by the amplification of 16S rDNA sequences from bacterial pure cultures. Phylogenetic analyses indicated the dominance of three γ-proteobacteria phylotypes: Enterobacter, Pantoea and Klebseilla. The diversity of the isolated bacteria was examined by restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis of 16S rDNA sequences amplified by a polymerase chain reaction (PCR). In addition, the survival of isolated bacteria in seawater was investigated by monitoring their growth and activity. All isolated bacteria exhibited resistance to penicillin and sulphonamides and demonstrated the potential to survive in seawater for 750 hours. This study exemplified the importance of monitoring seawater that may represent a latent source of hazardous bacteria.
Deliberate and accidental releases of opportunistic pathogens such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa into the environment increase the likelihood of spreading infectious diseases. Also, P. aeruginosa is responsible for nosocomial infections and usually harbour several antibiotic resistance genes. In the present study total of 76 strains of P. aeruginosa were characterized (54 strains were isolated from soil samples collected from a crude oil contaminated site located north of Kuwait and 22 strains were isolated from medical samples). Whereas the phenotypic characterization such as the biochemical tests using VITEK 2 system (bioMérieux) and antibiotics susceptibility testing (AST) showed the high similarity between the medical and the environmental strains, the molecular analyses based on multilocus sequence typing (MLST) and restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) demonstrated the heterogeneity of isolated P. aeruginosa indicating the presence of different clusters. Comparison of fingerprints obtained, confirmed the negative correlation between the environmental and the medical strains. In addition, results demonstrated that environmental strains are better adapted to crude oil contaminated sites. However, environmental strains may represent hidden reservoirs for pathogenic traits that may disseminate to other bacteria in the environment.
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