RESUMO
This work was done on 300 samples of stools, 150 samples from diarrheal cases presented at El-Kobba Military Hospital and 150 samples from the control group. Out of the 150 diarrheal samples 15 shigella subgroups were isolated [10%], while 3 strains were isolated from the control group [2%]. Biotyping was done by the conventional methods and API and also serotyping was done. Shigella dysenteriae constituted the majority of shigellae isolated from patients [6.66%], followed by Shigella sonnei [2.66%]. A comparison was done on different culture media used for isolation of shigellae. It was found that Desoxycholate citrate agar [DCA] and Macconkey's agar were highly selective medium for the isolation, while selenite enrichement media inhibits many isolates of shigella strains. This work shows a change in antibiotic resistance pattern of most isolated strains. All the isolated shigella strains were resistant to tetracyclin and streptomycin and 86.66% were resistant to trimethoprim