Development of PCR based diagnostic tools for identification of drug resistant strains in hospitals and environment

Abstract

newlineAn alarming rate of increase in antimicrobial resistance has been observed all over the world in the recent past. It poses a great challenge to public health increasing morbidity, mortality, and hospital cost. Once confined to hospitals this has become widely prevalent in the community too including livestock. This has great implications in countries like India, with its high population density and poor public health and sanitation. Drug resistance has now become an ecosystem problem where antibiotic-resistant genes (ARG) and bacteria constantly flow into different environments. Hence it has become urgent to determine the levels of resistance in the environment and to find appropriate solutions. newlineWater bodies serve as the easiest source of zoonotic transmission and the transmission of antibiotic-resistant genes through mobile genetic elements (plasmids, integrons). The present study was aimed to survey the clinically relevant bacteria in the hospital, bovine milk samples and environmental water bodies around our campus and to assess the prevalence of drug resistance in the bacteria and their bacteriophages by conventional and multiplex PCR methods. Here, in this study recording antibiotic resistance organism in lake water samples and sewage water samples in particular geographical areas during all over the year is valuable information to monitor the mode of transmission of antibiotic resistance genes. Also the sequence homology of ARG among the isolates collected from hospital, milk, and lake water and sewage water samples is very well explaining the interrelationship between the environmental and clinical isolates which in turn suggests the possible evolution of antibiotic resistance as community crisis newline