ROLE OF UNTREATED LIQUID HOSPITAL WASTE TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANT BACTERIA

Abstract

Islam M. J., Uddin M. S., Hakim M.A., Das K. K. and Hasan M. N. 2008. Role of Untreated Liquid Hospital Waste to the Development of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria. j. innov.dev.strategy 2(2): 17-21 The study was carried out in the Department of Microbiology, University of Chittagong, Bangladesh during September to December 2007. To investigate the contribution of Liquid hospital waste to the development of antibiotics resistance in our environmental microflora, a total of four types of samples were collected. Samples includes relationship between the use of antibiotic and the development of resistance, 40 strains of Escherichia coli were isolated from the liquid hospital waste of Chittagong Medical College Hospital. E. coli strains were analyzed by agar disc diffusion to determine their susceptibility patterns to 7 antimicrobial agents. Plasmid DNA was isolated from ten isolates taken randomly by agarose-gel electrophoresis. Results of antibiotic susceptibility test showed that all of the isolates are multi-drug resistant (≥4) and were resistant to Tetracycline (100%), Ciprofloxacin (100%), Penicillin (100%), Erythromycin (100%), Gentamycin (50%) and Chloramphenicol (90%) but all of them were sensitive to Imipenem. Turbidometric analysis of ciprofloxacin resistance pattern showed all of the isolates were highly resistant to ciprofloxacin even at concentration of 3000μg/ml. Agarose-gel electrophoresis of plasmid DNA from 10 isolates showed that all of them contain a high-molecular weight plasmid DNA. Our study highlight that the resistance development was directly related to use of antibiotics. the results suggest that the multi-drug resistant E.coli & plasmid containing multidrug resistant genes are present in the hospital waste may act as a possible source of transfer of these highly resistant pathogens and their genes to human that could be threat for the treatment of disease by commercially available antibiotics.