Current status of resistance to antibiotics in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: A review

Abstract

A review of literature was conducted to assess the prevalence and mechanisms of antibiotic resistance to date, mainly to β-lactam antibiotics, cephalosporins, carbapenems, colistin, and tigecycline in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). English and French publications were listed and analysed using PubMed/Medline, Google Scholar, and African Journals database between 1 January 1990 and 31 December 2019. For the 30 published articles found: (1) bacterial resistance to antibiotics concerned both Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria; (2) multidrug resistance prevalence was the same in half of Streptococcus pneumoniae isolates; (3) a worrying prevalence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) was noted, which is associated with co-resistance to several other antibiotics; and (4) resistance to third-generation cephalosporins was very high in Enterobacteriaceae, mainly because of blaCTX-M-1 group and blaSHV genes. Data on carbapenem and colistin resistance were not available in DRC until recently. Further work is required to set up a surveillance system for antibiotic resistance in DRC.

Keywords

• Antimicrobial resistance genes
• Democratic Republic of the Congo
• Enterobacteriaceae
• Extended-spectrum β-lactamases
• Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus