Identification of clinic uropathogen Escherichia coli isolates by antibiotic susceptibility, plasmid and whole cell protein profiles

Abstract

The aim of this research was to evaluate the protein, plasmid and antibiotic resistance patterns among 118 uropathogen E. coli strains from infected urinary systems. Plasmids were detected 113 strains (97%). Some isolates harboured up to 10 plasmids, ranging from 1 to 19 kb in size. The total whole cell protein profiles of the strains were obtained using the sodium dodecyl sulfatepolyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) method. The protein bands were stained with Coomassie-blue and analyzed by statistics package POPGEN. The 118 E. coli were also analyzed for their resistance to antimicrobial agents. The highest rates of resistance were against ampicillin (61 %) and amoxicillin-clavulanic acid (46.6 %). The most common antimicrobial resistance of these isolates was ampicillin, amoxicillin-clavulanic acid, trimethoprimsulfamethoxazole, gentamicin, ciprofloxacin, amikacin, cefoxitin, and ceftriaxone. Multiple resistance to all antibiotics except imipenem was observed in 5 isolates. Similarity matrix and dendrograms were generated by using UPGMA algorithm which made it possible to evaluate the similarity or intra-specific polymorphism degrees based on whole-cell protein fingerprinting, plasmid profiles and antibiotic resistance pattern. It was determined that the SDS-PAGE method may provide better criteria than plasmid and antimicrobial susceptibility for the taxonomic and epidemiological studies of E. coli isolates.