Abstract
Diarrhoea, a major contributor to high mortality in children may be caused by an array of bacterial, viral or parasitic pathogens acting individually or synergistically. This study identified the bacterial pathogens associated with diarrhoea in children aged 0-24 months, established the frequency of diarrhoea caused by each pathogen encountered in diarrhoea and determined the antibiotic resistance pattern of the children's faecal isolates obtained to some commonly used antibiotics in the study environment. A total of 107 children within the age range 0-24 months presenting with diarrhoea and 115 apparently healthy children were recruited into this study. Stool samples or rectal swabs were collected and cultured using standard microbiological procedures. Recovered isolates were tested against commonly used antibiotics using disc diffusion method. The isolation of enteric pathogens was found to be significantly (p 0.05) difference in the isolates recovered from both diarrhoeal and control subjects. The isolates were found to be multiply resistant to all the antibiotics tested. However, the incidence of resistance to commonly-used antibiotics was found to be less than 50%. Key words: Diarrhoea, children, bacterial pathogens, antibiotic resistance, Ile-Ife.
Highlights
As defined by the WHO (2017) diarrhoea is a condition in which the patient passes watery stools which take the shape of its container on three occasions within a period of twenty-four hours
Our results show that 12 genera of bacteria namely: Campylobacter spp., Staphylococcus spp., Escherichia coli, Salmonella spp., Shigella spp., Klebsiella spp., Enterobacter spp., Citrobacter spp., Proteus spp., Pseudomonas spp., Serratia spp. and various species of Candida and Aspergillus were recovered from stool samples that were processed
This study gives an insight into the identity of bacterial and fungal pathogens associated with childhood diarrhoea amongst children aged 0-24 months in Ile-Ife
Summary
As defined by the WHO (2017) diarrhoea is a condition in which the patient passes watery stools which take the shape of its container on three occasions within a period of twenty-four hours. It is only to be expected that UNICEF/WHO (2009) and Fischer et al (2012) have reported that nearly half of the children dying from all causes in Africa die of diarrhoea and reports by Babaniyi (1991), Alabi et al (1998), Akinnibosun and Nwafor (2015) and the Centre for Disease Control, CDC (2016) from Nigeria indicate that more than 315,000 of the 525,000 children of pre-school age who die, die of diarrhoea disease. Over the years the bacterial agents associated with childhood diarrhoea in Ile-Ife where the present study was carried out include various diarrheogenic strains of Eschcericia coli by Lamikanra et al (1996), Okeke et al (2000) as well as Igbeneghu (2009); Salmonella species by Omololu-Aso et al (2010); Shigella species by Abdu et al (2014); and Staphylococcus aureus by Akinkunmi and Lamikanra (2012). Olusanya et al (1983) as well as Aboderin et al (2002) have reported the isolation of Campylobacter from the faeces of children with diarrhoea within the study environment
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