Abstract
Antibiotics are widely used in intensive fish farming, which in turn increases the emergence of antimicrobial-resistant (AMR) bacteria in the aquatic environment. The current study investigates the prevalence and determines the antimicrobial susceptibility of E. coli, Salmonella, and Vibrio in farmed fishes on the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia. Over a period of 12 months, 32 aquaculture farms from the Malaysian states of Selangor, Negeri Sembilan, Melaka, and Perak were sampled. Both E. coli and Salmonella were highly resistant to erythromycin, ampicillin, tetracycline, and trimethoprim, while Vibrio was highly resistant to ampicillin and streptomycin. Resistance to the antibiotics listed as the highest priority and critically important for human therapy, such as colistin in E. coli (18.1%) and Salmonella (20%) in fish, is a growing public health concern. The multi-drug resistance (MDR) levels of E. coli and Salmonella in tilapia were 46.5% and 77.8%, respectively. Meanwhile, the MDR levels of E. coli, Salmonella, V. parahaemolyticus, V. vulnificus and V. cholerae in Asian seabass were 34%, 100%, 21.6%, 8.3% and 16.7%, respectively. Our findings provide much-needed information on AMR in aquaculture settings that can be used to tailor better strategies for the use of antibiotics in aquaculture production at the local and regional levels.
Highlights
The increasing demand for aquaculture products as a source of protein stimulates the propagation and expansion of aquaculture in many countries
The objective of this study is to describe the prevalence and distribution of antimicrobial resistance of E. coli, Salmonella and Vibrio in cultured tilapia and Asian seabass fish in four states on the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia, providing the much-needed information about bacteria of public health interest in aquaculture in line with the Malaysian AMR national action plan
We found that the frequency of multi-drug resistance (MDR) in E. coli in an Asian seabass and tilapia production system level to be between 34% and 46.5%
Summary
The increasing demand for aquaculture products as a source of protein stimulates the propagation and expansion of aquaculture in many countries. Together with other Southeast Asian countries, is a major producer of aquaculture products [1]. Despite the high nutritional quality that links fish consumption to positive health effects in humans, the aquaculture system is tremendously vulnerable to pollution and run-offs from anthropogenic sources which contaminate fish products with microbiological hazards such as E. coli and Salmonella. Aquaculture products contaminated with human pathogens have been documented in many countries, with Salmonella spp. and Vibrio sp. Drug-resistant E. coli, Salmonella and pathogenic Vibrio have been reported to circulate in aquaculture settings and their products [9,10,11,12]. The increasing level of resistance and multi-drug resistance (MDR) among pathogens to commonly used antibiotics in medical and veterinary therapies poses a great challenge to the treatment of human and animal diseases [13,14]. AMR in the aquaculture sector plays a significant role in the globalization of AMR [15] through aquatic ecosystem interconnections
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