Assessment of the Activity of Selected Antibiotics against Urinary Isolates of Escherichia Coli among Selected Pharmaceutical Industry Workers in Accra

Abstract

Exposure to sub-therapeutic amounts of antibiotics has been identified to be a major contributory factor to the susceptibility patterns of microorganisms. Pharmaceutical industry workers are thus at risk of developing resistant strains to the antibiotics they produce through repeated and long exposure to sub-therapeutic doses of antibiotics in the course of their daily work. The study was done to assess the activity of Amoxicillin, Cefuroxime and Ciprofloxacin against urine isolates of E. coli among pharmaceutical industry workers in Accra. The study also sought to find an association between industrial exposure to antibiotics and susceptibility patterns of microorganisms to the antibiotics produced using the current station of the workers. The agar disc diffusion method was used to determine the susceptibility of the E. coli isolates to the selected antibiotics whiles the broth-microdilution method was used to determine the minimum inhibitory concentrations (MIC) of the antibiotics against the sensitive and intermediate E. coli strains. E. coli strains were identified and isolated from 20 out of the 101 urine samples taken from both production floor workers and non-production floor workers selected across three (3) pharmaceutical industries. All isolated strains of E. coli were resistant to Amoxicillin whiles 75% (15 of 20) of the isolated E. coli strains were resistant to Cefuroxime. 15% (3 of 20) of the isolated strains showed intermediate resistance whiles 10% (2 of 20) of the isolated strains were sensitive to Cefuroxime. 45% (9 of 20) of the E. coli urine isolates were resistant whiles 15% (3 of 20) of the isolated strains showed intermediate resistance to Ciprofloxacin. 40% (8 of 20) of the isolated strains were sensitive to Ciprofloxacin. However, there was significant association between industrial exposure to antibiotics and subsequent development of resistant strains of microorganisms to the antibiotics produced. The MIC for Cefuroxime ranged between 20–30 μg/mL with the latter occurring for the intermediate resistant strains whiles the MIC for Ciprofloxacin ranged between 3–5 μg/mL with the later occurring for the intermediate resistant strains.