Antibiotic Susceptibility of Salmonella spp Isolated from Fresh Leafy Vegetables Samples by Using Culture and Polymerase Chain Reaction Methods

Abstract

Background: Microbial contamination continues to be one of the leading risks to food safety. Contaminated leafy green vegetables are the primary cause of infection among children, elderly, and immunocompromised people. The purposes of this work were to isolate and identify of Salmonella spp. in fresh leafy vegetables collected from Jeddah Central Market, Jeddah district, western area, kingdom of Saudi Arabia, estimated of the number and percentage of isolated Salmonella spp and determined the antimicrobial susceptibility of the isolated Salmonella spp.
 Methods: Five-hundred samples were examined for the presence of Salmonella spp, by using standard microbiological and biochemical tests. Further, detection of Salmonella spp. was done by PCR with the primers targeting invA gene, a key factor for entry of Salmonella into epithelial cells. Susceptibility of the isolated Salmonella spp was done toward thirteen different antibiotics.
 Results: The percentage of isolation of Salmonella spp was 1.2 % (06/500). It was isolated as (0.40%, 02/500) from Basil, (0.20%, 01/500) from Spinach, Rocket, Parsley and Chards. Two isolates (2/6, 33.3%) showed positive Salmonella invA gene (244 bp). All isolated Salmonella showed resistance to Cephalexin (30 µg/disc), Metronidazole (5 µg/disc) and Methicillin (5 µg/disc).