Objective: The study was aimed at determining the prevalent biotypes of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in the environment of Buea and the susceptibility of isolates to antibiotics.
Methods: One hundred and fifty clinical specimens (urine, wound and sputum) collected from patients attending various health institutions in Buea, and 50 environmental swabs from furniture, appliances and surroundings of these institutions were screened for P. aeruginosa using standard microbiological and biochemical methods. Antimicrobial susceptibility of the isolates was determined by the disc diffusion assay.
Results: Fifty-one (25.5%) of the 200 specimens were positive for the organism with urine (30%) being the most common source of isolation. Biochemical characterization grouped the isolates into eight biotypes with biotypes B III (25.59%), B II (23.53%) and B I (21.57%) being the most prevalent. Antimicrobial susceptibility results of isolates revealed 13 antibiotype patterns based on resistance to the antimicrobial agents investigated. The resistance pattern, cefotaxime, gentamicin and tetracycline (CTX(R) GEN(R) TET(R)) was the most common (21.6%) amongst the isolates. Over 40% of the isolates exhibited multi-drug resistance to five or more antibiotics, especially environmental isolates. However, there was a significant difference (P < 0.05) in the susceptibility of isolates to ciprofloxacin (98%), amikacin (90.2%) and netilmicin (80.4%) compared with other drugs used in the study.
Conclusion: A combination of biotyping and antibiogram, which are relatively cheap and routinely available methods in our environment, could be useful for clinical and epidemiological studies particularly in laboratories in the developing world with limited resources.