Studies on the â-lactamase production of bacterial isolates from smoked bush meats correlated with bacterial resistance to three &#223-lactam antibiotics

Abstract

Eight bacterial species were isolated from smoked meats and screened for the production of â-lactamase; which was detected by penicillin impregnated starch paper strips. â-lactamase was detected in the following bacterial isolates: Klebsiella pneumoniae (75.0%), Escherichia coli (69.7%), Proteus sp. (33.3%), Pseudomonas aureginosa (25.9%), Staphylococcus aureus (80.0%) and Streptococcus feacalis (12.5%). There was no â-lactamase detected in Lactobacillus casei and Salmonella sp. isolated from the meats. The prevalence of â-lactamase detected in the samples shows that the bacteria posses the potential to produce â-lactamase irrespective of the source of isolation. The sensitivity of the â-lactam antibiotics (penicillin G, ampicillin and cloxacillin) used range from 8.3-100.0%. Although, penicillin G has the lowest sensitivity of 8.3% to Klebsiella pneumoniae while, ampicillin and cloxacillin were 25.0% and 16.7% sensitive to the same bacteria respectively. Salmonella species is the most susceptible (range from 70.0-100.0%) to the tested antibiotics among the â-lactamase positive bacteria screened. The frequency of occurrence of the pathogenic bacteria and the feacal indicator organism (E.coli) indicated gross contamination of some of the meat samples analyzed; this indicates that the meats may have been contaminated either during processing with faecal contaminated water or handling by the sellers. In conclusion, the habit of eating uncooked smoked meat should be discouraged and emphasis should be laid on properly cooked meat before consumption