Frequency and Antimicrobial Susceptibility Pattern of isolated Enterococci Species from Different Clinical Specimens at Almak Nemer Hospital, River Nile State, Sudan

Abstract

Enterococci are opportunistic bacteria that become pathogenic when they colonize niches where they are not normally found. This is a descriptive cross sectional study carried out at Almak Nemer Hospital Shendi city, Sudan, during the period from April 2020 to May 2022. The aim of this work to study the frequency of Enterococcus species among bacterial infected patients, by using conventional cultural methods and to study the antimicrobial susceptibility pattern. A total of 362 patients with symptoms of urinary tract infection, wound infection and bacteremia were enrolled in this study. The age of infected patients ranging from 16 to 70 years with mean age of (42.03 ± 22.6) years. Regarding the gender of patients 140 (38.7%) were males and 222 (66.7%) were females. The frequency of Enterococcus isolates was 15 (4.1%), out of these 15 Enterococcus isolates, 14 (93.3%) were E.faecalis and only one (6.7%) was E.faecium. Considering the type of infections, 10/15 (66.7%) of Enterococcus isolates were from UTI patients, 5/15 (33.3%) were from wound infection patients and no Enterococci isolate was detected from bacteremic patients. Eight out these 15 Enterococcus isolates were from males and seven were from females, while 12/15 (80%) of Enterococcus isolates were from inpatients and 3 (20%) were from outpatients. Enterococcus isolates show high resistance rate to Chloramphenicol (13) (86.7%) Gentamycin 12 (80%), Ciprofloxacin 10 (66.7%) and no Vancomycin Resistant Enterococci was isolated. while 10/15 (66.7%) of Enterococcus isolates were multi drug resistant. The only one Enterococcus faecium isolate was resistant to Ampicillin 1 (6.7%). This study conclude that the frequency of isolated Enterococci among different clinical specimens is moderate and the most predominant species was Enterococcus faecalis. This study showed an association between Enterococcus infections and type of infections, hospital admission and age. Enterococcus isolates in this study show high rate of multi drug resistant and they showed high resistance rate to Chloramphenicol, Ciprofloxacin, and Gentamycin, while no Vancomycin Resistant Enterococci (VRE) was isolated.