Pathogenic Bacteria Associated with Acute Childhood Diarrhea and Their Susceptibility Profiling in Misan Province

Abstract

Diarrheal disease is a major health problem causing death among children, especially, under 3-years of age, hence, it is necessary to detect the etiological agent for the active therapy of the disease. Two hundred stool specimens were collected from children with acute diarrhea between 2–60 months of age during April to October in 2018 from two hospitals in Misan Province. Diarrhea was more frequent in children with the age group (13–24 months) and the feeding bottle (64% and 63%, respectively). Pathogenic bacteria were presented in 56% of specimens. Enteropathogenic bacteria were identified by Vitek system. Out of 112 bacterial isolates were identified, E. coli was the common cause with 89 isolates. Nevertheless, the frequencies of Salmonella typhi, Shigella flexneri, Shigella sonnei and Shigella dysenteriae were 8, 5, 4 and 2 respectively, whereas, Salmonella enterica, Salmonella paratyphi A, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Klebsiella pneumoniae were 1 for each. Antibiotic susceptibility tests accomplished on all identified isolates using the disc diffusion technique. Among the antibiotics tested, imipenem was a very effective drug (98.2%), followed by ciprofloxacin, co-trimaxazole and amikacin (77.6%, 76.7% and 61.6% respectively), while ampicillin and cephalothin were poor activity against the bacterial isolates (2.7% and 0.89%) respectively.