Multidrug Resistant Providencia stuartii in Chicken Droppings: Public Health Implications for Poultry Workers and Associated Communities in nearby Dhaka Metropolis, Bangladesh

Introduction: Poultry farms (PFs) have appeared successful and wide spread business-industry in Bangladesh, which often remains contaminated with various hazardous microorganisms when standard hygiene practices are compromised. We sought to investigate a zoonotic human pathogen, Providencia stuartii and their antibiotic resistance pattern in chicken droppings collected from local poultry farms in Savar area, Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Materials and Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study to find the prevalence of antibiotic resistance in bacteria from chicken droppings in linked to antibiotic-uses and abuses in PFs. Random chicken droppings were collected from broiler type chickens, layer-chickens, and pre-starter broiler chickens to make samples representative. Following standard bacteriological culture, semisolid chicken-droppings were diluted aseptically, enriched in buffered peptone water, and then streaked onto a xylose-lysine-deoxycholate agar plate. Selected P. stuartii colonies were identified biochemically using API 20E (BioMe´rieux) and antimicrobial susceptibility testing was performed following Kirby-Bauer (disk-diffusion) method.

Results: We reported the isolation of P. stuartii for the first time in Bangladesh in chicken droppings collected from randomly selected local PFs. Red colored colonies without black centre on XLD medium were considered as presumptive Providencia stuartii that were subsequently confirmed by API 20E system. Six chicken-droppings revealed the presence of P. stuartii from a total 70 samples tested, showed a prevalence of 8.6% with overall farm prevalence is 71.4%. We took 11 isolates from the six positive samples to examine their antibiotic resistance and found 82% of them were resistant to nalidixic, 73% to ampicillin, and 54.5% to trimethoprim- sulfamethoxazole. Relatively ciprofloxacin and gentamicin appeared more functional, where only 27.3% and 18.2% strains showed resistant, respectively. Over 54% of the isolates appeared resistant to >3 antibiotics and 36.4% with two different antibiotics. None of the isolates remained susceptible to all the 6 antibiotics tested.

Conclusion: Detected MDR P. stuartii in chicken-droppings from local poultry farms may contribute their transmission to surrounding communities and may implicate serious biosecurity concern in environmental and food-safety issues in resource constraint countries, like, Bangladesh.