Antibiotic Resistance of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in Well Waters in Irrigated Zone (Middle Atlas-Morocco)

Abstract

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a bacteria which can live in freshwater, soil and plants. It is a commensal of the digestive tube, slightly abundant in human body. Its presence in wells water is a result of current anthropogenic activity and pollution loads. It is an important nosocomial pathogenic agent characterized by an intrinsic resistance to multiple antimicrobial agents which can develop high-level multidrug resistance. To assess the contamination of these well waters by this pathogenic germ, two hundred samples were collected for four seasonal campaigns between March 2017 and May 2018 with a rate of forty three (43) samples per season in an irrigated zone. The samples were analysed to identify P. aeruginosa, then the isolated serotypes were determined by slid agglutination test using four pools and 20 monovalent Antisera. The detected P. aeruginosa were tested for susceptibility to 18 antibiotics. A total of (n=85/139) isolated strains were identified as P. aeruginosa representing 61.15 % of prevalence among Pseudomonas spp. Antimicrobial resistance revealed that 68% of them are multidrug resistant, while15.09 % of strains resist at least to 7 antibiotics, 30.19% resist at least to 11 antibiotics, 13.21% resist at least to 12 antibiotics, 5.66% resist at least to 13 antibiotics, and 3.77% resist at least to 14 antibiotics. The high level resistance of P. aeruginosa is observed with piperacillin tazobactam (100/10μg) (84.91%), ciprofloxacin (5μg) (79.25%), imipenem (10μg) and ceftazidime (30μg) (37.58%). The resistance of phenotypes of P. aeruginosa strains allowed to identify (n=20/85) ESBL, (n=31/85) oxacillinase broad spectrum ES-OXA, (n=5/85) phenotype of impermeability to imipenem, (n=12/85) cephalosporinase AMPC, and (n=17/85) wild type. The results showed the high antibiotic resistance levels of P. aeruginosa strains from well water samples against antibiotics. Furthermore, based on the results, these well waters can be a source of P. aeruginosa and human and animal susceptibility to other opportunistic pathogens.