Prevalence and Antibiotic Susceptibility of Pathogenic Enterobacteria Strains from Three Biotopes in the City of Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso)

Purpose: The emergence of antibiotic resistance in pathogenic Enterobacteriaceae is a public health problem in tropical countries such as Burkina Faso. Antibiotic resistance could be identified using a variety of approaches. This study aimed to estimate the prevalence of pathogenic enterobacteria strains from three sources, as well as their antibiotic resistance profile to biotope and climatic season.

Material and methods: The methodological approach consisted of identifying Enterobacteriaceae from human (urine, stool), animal (eggs, milk, fish), and environmental (soil, lettuce) samples, followed by assessing their antibiotic susceptibility. Samples were collected from February to December 2023. Bacterial species were isolated and phenotypically identified (morphologically, culturally, biochemically, and antigenically) using standard methods. The prevalence of bacterial susceptibility to ten antibiotics was determined using the agar disk diffusion method. The collected data were analyzed with IBM SPSS Statistics 25 software.

Results: A total of 615 Enterobacteriaceae isolates were collected, including 300, 168, and 147 samples from human, animal, and environmental sources respectively. Phenotypic characteristics allowed to partially identify 43 species, among these 29.76% belonged to Escherichia coli, 24.72% to Enterobacter cloacae, 13.82% to Klebsiella pneumoniae, 3.41% to Enterobacter sakazakii and 2.6% to Klebsiella oxytoca. Bacterial resistance rates were: aminopenicillins (54.8%), first-generation cephalosporins (35.3%), sulfonamides (33.3%), third-generation cephalosporins (30.7%), fourth-generation cephalosporins (22.5%), fluoroquinolones (21.8%), phenicols (16.8%), and carbapenems (16.2%). The distribution of antibiotic resistance was 45.3% from human sources, 19.3% from animal sources, and 13.8% from environmental sources.

Conclusion: The results indicate that resistant bacteria can come from any of the three biotopes, with human origin being the most frequent. The high prevalence of resistance to the antibiotics tested in isolated bacteria raises interest in investigating the genetic factors responsible.