Prevalence and multidrug resistance pattern of Escherichia coli isolated from street food

Abstract

Street food is one of the most consumable food items in the countries like Bangladesh, which could pose public health concern because of their preparation and vending scheme. To address the public health issues, the present study was targeted the isolation of Escherichia coli, a public health threatened bacteria from a highly consumable street food items chatpoti and its various components including chatpoti salad, chatpoti water from five randomly selected markets such as Foy's lake, Jhautala Bazar, G.E.C, Bahaddarhat Bazar and Reazuddin Bazar of Chattogram City Corporation (CCC), Bangladesh. The collected samples were screened for E. coli using classical bacteriological examination. Chatpoti samples showed 30% individual colonies for E. coli whereas other ingredients of chatpoti including water and salad showed reasonably higher (50%) prevalence of E. coli. The collected samples were tested for antimicrobial susceptibility against 8 different selective antimicrobial agents for bacteriological examination. Here, the E. coli isolates recovered from chatpoti were found 100% resistant to Ampicillin, Amoxicillin, Tetracycline but was 100% sensitive to Doxycycline and Gentamicin with few of intermediate. Similarly, the E. coli isolated from chatpoti salad and chatpoti water were also showed similar resistance and sensitivity pattern and additionally Cephalexin resistance observed in chatpoti salad. In summary, all isolates of E. coli showed an evidence of multi-drug resistance which is a global alarming issue because this level of antimicrobial resistance in those bacteria isolated from food sample may act as media for antimicrobial resistance transmission and could pose zoonotic significance. Therefore, it is important to monitor the occurrence of antimicrobial resistance in other street food items, which is very essential for public health context.