Antimicrobial Resistance, Serologic and Molecular Characterization of E. coli Isolated from Calves with Severe or Fatal Enteritis in Bavaria, Germany.

Andrea Feuerstein,Angelika Hoffmann,Nelly Scuda,Corinna Klose,Kerstin Boll,Julia M Riehm,Alexander Melchner,Anna Rettinger,Shari Fell,Reinhard K Straubinger

doi:10.3390/antibiotics11010023

Andrea Feuerstein, Angelika Hoffmann + Show 8 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/antibiotics11010023

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Journal: Antibiotics	Publication Date: Dec 27, 2021
Citations: 12	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Abstract

Worldwide, enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) cause neonatal diarrhea and high mortality rates in newborn calves, leading to great economic losses. In Bavaria, Germany, no recent facts are available regarding the prevalence of virulence factors or antimicrobial resistance of ETEC in calves. Antimicrobial susceptibility of 8713 E. coli isolates obtained from 7358 samples of diseased or deceased diarrheic calves were investigated between 2015 to 2019. Considerably high rates of 84.2% multidrug-resistant and 15.8% extensively drug-resistant isolates were detected. The resistance situation of the first, second and third line antimicrobials for the treatment, here amoxicillin-clavulanate, enrofloxacin and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, is currently acceptable with mean non-susceptibility rates of 28.1%, 37.9% and 50.0% over the investigated 5-year period. Furthermore, the ETEC serotypes O101:K28, O9:K35, O101:K30, O101:K32, O78:K80, O139:K82, O8:K87, O141:K85 and O147:K89, as well as the virulence factors F17, F41, F5, ST-I and stx1 were identified in a subset of samples collected in 2019 and 2020. The substantially high rates of multi- and extensively drug-resistant isolates underline the necessity of continuous monitoring regarding antimicrobial resistance to provide reliable prognoses and adjust recommendations for the treatment of bacterial infections in animals.

Highlights

Escherichia coli account to the major enteric and systemic pathogens of the Gramnegative rods within the family Enterobacteriaceae
Enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC), a subset of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC), further include intimin, an adhesin coded from the enterocyte effacement pathogenicity island [19,20] and enterohemolysin, a toxin encoded by the ehxA gene [21]
Within the study period 8713 E. coli were isolated from 7358 diarrheic calves at the federal state veterinary laboratory in Bavaria, Germany (Table S1)

Summary

Introduction

Enterotoxigenic E. coli (ETEC) pose a leading cause of intestinal disease, especially within the first four days of life [3,4,5]. As published in several case reports, a majority of human EHEC disease outbreaks are caused by the serotype O157:H7 originating from contaminated ground beef [13,22,23]. This serotype is responsible for the hemorrhagic colitis and the life-threatening hemolytic uremic syndrome with the occurrence of thrombocytopenia, hemolytic anemia and thrombotic microangiopathy that may lead to acute renal failure and death [23,24,25,26]

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