Antimicrobial Susceptibility, Phage Typing and Plasmid Profile of <i>Salmonella enterica</i> Serotype <i>paratyphi A</i> Strains Isolated in Kuwait

Abstract

Objective: To determine the antimicrobial susceptibility, phage type and plasmid profile pattern of Salmonella enterica serotype paratyphi A strains isolated in Kuwait. Material and Methods: From January 1995 to December 1999, 106 strains of S. enterica serotype paratyphi A isolated from an equal number of cases of enteric fever, attending the Infectious Disease and Mubarak Al-Kabeer Hospitals in Kuwait were investigated. The isolates were tested for antimicrobial susceptibility to 8 commonly used antimicrobial agents. Their phage type and plasmid profile patterns were determined using an international set of phages and Qiagen plasmid mini kit, respectively. Results: All of the isolates were susceptible to ciprofloxacin, cefuroxime, ceftazidime, piperacillin and co-trimoxazole. One hundred isolates were susceptible to ampicillin, 99 to chloramphenicol and 98 to tetracycline. None of the isolates was multidrug resistant. Sixty-six percent of the isolates were phage type I, 27.4% phage type II and 6.6% were untypable. All phage type I and untypable strains had 3 plasmids of 2.2, 5 and 20 kb, whereas phage type II strains had only 1 plasmid of 20 kb. Conclusion: The findings indicate that while all of the isolates of the S. enterica serotype paratyphi A were susceptible to 4 of the drugs tested, some were resistant to ampicillin, chloramphenicol or tetracycline, thereby indicating the need for continued surveillance and monitoring of antimicrobial susceptibility of these isolates.

Incidence of Bloodstream Infections in a Speciality Hospital in Kuwait: 8-Year Experience

“…The probable reasons for this difference may be due to the population mix, because our hospital is a specialized hospital dealing with only infectious disease patients. Our present observation is similar to our previous reports [7][8][9] .…”

“…The percentage of MDR strains during the study period remained between 23 and 48%. Panigrahi et al [7] in an earlier study from our hospital had reported that 45% of the isolates of S. typhi between January 1993 and December 1994 were MDR but there were no MDR strains among S. paratyphi A [8] . The percentage of MDR S. typhi has decreased from 45 to 23% in 2001.…”

“…Increased resistance of S. enterica serotype typhi and paratyphi A to quinolones, mainly ciprofl oxacin, has been widely reported [24,25] . In the earlier reports from our hospital no such observation was made [7,8] . However, in the present study, we have noted that the percent- age of reduced susceptibility of these two Salmonella species to ciprofl oxacin (MIC 1 0.125 g/ml) [26] had increased up to 60% in 2002.…”

“…Diseases Hospital) have been published [7][8][9] . However, no report is available presenting the total picture of BIs in Infectious Disease Hospital, Kuwait, hence this retrospective study was carried out to characterize the BIs to determine the frequency of bacterial isolation and their antimicrobial susceptibility pattern.…”

Sequence Analysis of the Plasmid pGY1 Harbored in Salmonella enterica Serovar Paratyphi A

“…The whole genome of S. Paratyphi A strain ATCC 9150 has been sequenced (McClelland et al 2004), and there have been no reports that it harbors plasmids. Some small plasmids that are harbored in S. Paratyphi A have been continually reported, such as plasmids of 2.2, 5, and 20 kb reported in Kuwait (Panigrahi et al 2003); 2.2 and 20 kb reported in Wenzhou, China (Chu et al 2005); and 3.6 and 9.5 kb reported in Guiyang, China (Zhang et al 2004a).…”