Antibiotic resistance and transfer of R. factor in some clinical isolates

ABSTRACT

The sensitivity of 26 E. coli isolates recovered from the diarrheal cases at paediatric patient outclinic Kasr EI-Aini Hospital in addition to one E. coli K[I2] standard strain against 9 different antibiotics was investigated. The number of strains that produced heat stable and heat labile enterotoxin compared with the total number of strains were recorded. The transfer of multiple resistance factors [R. factors] of wild strains of E. coli to the new mutants which was obtained after conjugation with E. coli K[I2] was recorded. The resistance to Ampicillin, Rifampicin, Cefalixin, Kanamycin, Polymixin and Nalidixic acid were transferred from wild strains to mutants with a percentage of nearly 100%. The resistance to Ampicillin, Kanamycin, Polymixin and nalidixic acid became 100% for heat stable producing strains compared with 30%, 20%, 40% and 10%, respectively before conjugation. The resistance to Ampicillin and Kanamycin increased for heat labile producing strains to 100% compared with 83.3% and 33.3% before conjugation. The high percentage of drug resistance may be attributed to transfer of conjugative plasmids