Nucleic Acid Based Techniques for the Detection and Identification of Drug Resistance among Ocular Bacterial Pathogens

Abstract

Antibiotic resistance among ocular pathogens is increasing in consonance with the increase of resistance among bacteria and fungi associated with systemic infections. The factors contributing to the development of drug resistance among ocular bacterial isolates include overuse of antibiotics for systemic infections, increased drug resistance are newlineimproper dosing regimen, misuse of antibiotics and extended duration of therapy and finally the overuse of topical antibiotics in the eye. newlineThe rate of prevalence of microorganism and the predominant bacterial species newlineisolated among ocular specimens in our hospital population were studied to understand predominant and emerging ocular bacterial pathogens and to understand the current rate of occurrence of Polymicrobial infections (PMI) and a special focus was given to emerging drug resistance among them. The predominant bacterial species identified in the current study includes Coagulase negative Staphylococci (10.4%), Coagulase positive newlineStaphylococci (6.5%) and nterobacteriaceae (5.9%). P. acnes is the predominant newlineanaerobe (2.6%). The rate of PMI was 3.9% newlineThe conventional methods involved in the detection of bacterial pathogens in newlineintraocular specimens are less sensitive due to lesser amount of available clinical newlinespecimen and low microbial threshold, laborious and time consuming techniques.