ANTIMICROBIAL SUSCEPTIBILITY OF Salmonella Enteritidis STRAINS FROM DIFFERENT SOURCES

Abstract

Enteritidisin the period from 1995 to 1997 is described in strains isolated from healthy and ill chickens, human sporadic gastrenteritis outbreaks related to egg products consumption, poultry meats, broiler chicken pipped embryos, meat meal/aviculture environment, swine feces and foods (cheese, mayonnaise, cake mass, cake cover and bacon). It was observed that 72.2% were sensitive, whereas 9.2% and 17.8% were resistant and intermediate, respectively. Resistance was verified in 6.2% of the human isolates, in 5.0% of poultry meats, in 36.4% of foods, in 4.2% of chickens, in 23.7% of pipped embryos, in 5.7% of meat meal/aviculture environment and in 13.3% of swine. The obtained results revealed high proportion of strains with intermediate sensibility (18.1% of total). We observed 100% of sensibility to six antibiotics. Considering the resistant strains, 15 (57.7%) presented resistance to only nine antibiotics. Four (15.4%) (chickens and pecked eggs) presented double resistance; triple resistance was detected in one strain (3.8%), whereas six (23.1%) presented multiresistant profiles, to 4-9 drugs, identified in the human strains, foods, chickens and pecked eggs. Although the resistance index described here may be considered low, there was high frequency of multiresistant profiles and of intermediate sensibility to tetracycline, particularly in samples associated to chickens.

KEY WORDS: Antibiotic multirresistance, food, chickens, human gastrenteritis.