Original Research

Prevalence of virulence and antimicrobial resistance genes in Salmonella spp. isolated from commercial chickens and human clinical isolates from South Africa and Brazil

Oliver T. Zishiri, Nelisiwe Mkhize, Samson Mukaratirwa
Onderstepoort Journal of Veterinary Research | Vol 83, No 1 | a1067 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/ojvr.v83i1.1067 | © 2016 Oliver T. Zishiri, Nelisiwe Mkhize, Samson Mukaratirwa | This work is licensed under CC Attribution 4.0
Submitted: 30 September 2015 | Published: 26 May 2016

About the author(s)

Oliver T. Zishiri, Department of Genetics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Nelisiwe Mkhize, Department of Genetics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Samson Mukaratirwa, Department of Genetics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Abstract

Salmonellosis is a significant public health concern around the world. The injudicious use of antimicrobial agents in poultry production for treatment, growth promotion and prophylaxis has resulted in the emergence of drug resistant strains of Salmonella. The current study was conducted to investigate the prevalence of virulence and antimicrobial resistance genes from Salmonella isolated from South African and Brazilian broiler chickens as well as human clinical isolates. Out of a total of 200 chicken samples that were collected from South Africa 102 (51%) tested positive for Salmonella using the InvA gene. Of the overall 146 Salmonella positive samples that were screened for the iroB gene most of them were confirmed to be Salmonella enterica with the following prevalence rates: 85% of human clinical samples, 68.6% of South African chicken isolates and 70.8% of Brazilian chicken samples. All Salmonella isolates obtained were subjected to antimicrobial susceptibility testing with 10 antibiotics. Salmonella isolates from South African chickens exhibited resistance to almost all antimicrobial agents used, such as tetracycline (93%), trimethoprim-sulfamthoxazole (84%), trimethoprim (78.4%), kanamycin (74%), gentamicin (48%), ampicillin (47%), amoxicillin (31%), chloramphenicol (31%), erythromycin (18%) and streptomycin (12%). All samples were further subjected to PCR in order to screen some common antimicrobial and virulence genes of interest namely spiC, pipD, misL, orfL, pse-1, tet A, tet B, ant (3")-la, sul 1 and sul. All Salmonella positive isolates exhibited resistance to at least one antimicrobial agent; however, antimicrobial resistance patterns demonstrated that multiple drug resistance was prevalent. The findings provide evidence that broiler chickens are colonised by pathogenic Salmonella harbouring antimicrobial resistance genes. Therefore, it is evident that there is a need for prudent use of antimicrobial agents in poultry production systems in order to mitigate the proliferation of multiple drug resistance across species.

Keywords: Salmonella; antimicrobial resistance; chicken; human; susceptibility; virulence gene


Keywords

Salmonella; antimicrobial resistance; chicken; human; susceptibility; virulence gene

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