A total of 300 human fecal samples were collected from febrile neutropenic patients suffering from severe gastroenteritis, followed by identification and serological characterization of recovered isolates. Fifty nontyphoidal Salmonella (NTS) serovars were recovered. A total of serologically identified 50 NTS serovars recovered from poultry of the same geographical area and during the same period as well as one standard strain S. Poona were supplied by the Bacterial Bank of Animal Health Research Institute of Egypt. Antibiogram analysis revealed that the human and poultry serovars exhibited similar antimicrobial resistance patterns against 28 different antimicrobial agents, particularly against ampicillin, cefotaxime, oxytetracycline, and erythromycin. Plasmids harboring blaCTX-m, blaSHV, blaTEM, and aac(6')-Ib were detected in 11 (22%) and 8 (16%) of human and poultry serovars, respectively. Molecular detection of the most clinically relevant virulence genes and analysis of the associated virulence genotypes proved that the human (n = 11) and poultry serovars (n = 12) shared 11 genotypes. Enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus PCR analysis revealed that human and poultry serovars were clustered together in 3 out of the 4 clusters with a similarity index ranged from 0.15 to 1. Since poultry are usually consumed by humans, the presence of resistant bacteria harboring transmissible genetic elements is of great health concern.
Keywords: ERIC PCR; antimicrobial resistance; nontyphoidal Salmonella; serotyping; virulence genes.