Abstract
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in Escherichia coli (E. coli) poses a public health concern worldwide. Wild birds and rodents, due to their mobility, are potential vehicles for transmission of AMR bacteria to humans. Ninety-six wild birds’ faecal samples and 135 rodents’ droppings samples were collected and analysed in 2017. Forty-six E. coli isolates from wild birds and rodents were subjected to AMR phenotypic and genotypic characterisation. The proportion of E. coli isolates resistant to at least one of the antimicrobials tested from wild birds (80.8%) was significantly higher than that of isolates from rodents (40.0%). The proportion of E. coli isolates resistant to each antimicrobial class for wild birds was 3.8% to 73.1% and that for rodents was 5.0% to 35.0%. Six out of 26 E. coli isolates from wild birds (23.1%) and two out of 20 (10.0%) isolates from rodents were multi-drug resistant (MDR) strains. These MDR E. coli isolates were detected with various antimicrobial resistance genes such as blaTEM-1B and qnrS1 and could be considered as part of the environmental resistome. Findings in this study suggested that wild birds and rodents could play a role in disseminating antimicrobial resistant E. coli, and this underscores the necessity of environment management and close monitoring on AMR bacteria in wild birds and rodents to prevent spreading of resistant organisms to other wildlife animals and humans.
Highlights
Escherichia coli (E. coli) is a commensal bacterium found in the guts of animals [1,2]
* Denotes a combination of two different classes of antimicrobial agents being used in the antimicrobial susceptibility testing. This is the first report on the occurrence and antimicrobial resistant phenotype and genotype in E. coli isolates from wild birds and rodents in Singapore
This study revealed that the occurrence of E. coli in wild birds (27.1%) in Singapore was relatively lower than that reported in other countries such as Switzerland (53.7%) and Saudi Arabia (93.0%) [16,17]
Summary
Escherichia coli (E. coli) is a commensal bacterium found in the guts of animals [1,2]. It can be pathogenic and cause gastroenteritis, bacteraemia and urinary tract infections [2,3,4]. The bacterium is known to be susceptible to selection pressure [2] and has the high competency to pick up and transfer antibiotic resistance genes to and from other bacterial strains [2,5]. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 5606; doi:10.3390/ijerph17155606 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
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