“Antimicrobial-resistant E. coli widely distributed in raw milk and raw milk cheese in Egypt”

“The goal of a recent study, carried out by scientists from Egypt and Japan, was to examine antimicrobial resistance and to characterize the implicated genes in 222 isolates of Escherichia coli from 187 samples of raw milk and the two most popular cheeses in Egypt. E. coli isolates were tested for susceptibility to 12 antimicrobials by a disk diffusion method. Among the 222 E. coli isolates, 66 (29.7%) were resistant to one or more antimicrobials, and half of these resistant isolates showed a multidrug resistance phenotype (resistance to at least three different drug classes). The resistance traits were observed to tetracycline (27.5%), ampicillin (18.9%), streptomycin (18.5%), sulfamethoxazole-trimethoprim (11.3%), cefotaxime (4.5%), kanamycin (4.1%), ceftazidime (3.6%), chloramphenicol (2.3%), nalidixic acid (1.8%), and ciprofloxacin (1.4%). No resistance to fosfomycin and imipenem was observed. The data suggest that antimicrobial-resistant E. coli are widely distributed in the milk production and processing environment in Egypt and may play a role in dissemination of antimicrobial resistance to other pathogenic and commensal bacteria.”

Source: PubMed