Musa Yakubu Tula
Department of Biological Science Technology, Federal Polytechnic Mubi, Adamawa State, Nigeria
*Corresponding author’s Email: birtyty@gmail.com, doi.org/10.55639/607.02010021
ABSTRACT
Door handles are mechanical devices used to open or close doors manually and are among the most common fomites facilitating contamination. This study seeks to identify Gram-negative bacterial species from surfaces of office door handles within the Federal Polytechnic Mubi and to analyze their antibiotic resistance profiles and the presence of Extended-Spectrum β lactamase (ESBL) encoding genes. Gram-negative bacterial isolates were isolated from swabs of 100 office door handles and screened for antibiotic resistance, multiple antibiotic resistance (MAR) index, and Extended-Spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL) encoding genes using standard protocols. Of the 100 samples analyzed, only 41(41.0%) were contaminated with at least a bacterial isolate. 48 Gram-negative bacteria were isolated with the most preponderance (29.2%) from the Registry department. Also, Pseudomonas aeruginosa (47.9%) and Escherichia coli (20.8%) were the most detected bacteria isolates. Of the 48 Gram-negative bacterial isolates, 47(97.9%) were resistant to at least one antibiotic. Resistance to all the antibiotics by all the isolates was high and variable. Resistance to cefuroxime was the highest and least to ofloxacin and pefloxacin. Multi-drug resistance (MDR) phenotype was detected in 32(68.1%) bacterial isolates. The isolates’ Multiple antibiotic resistance (MAR) index varies from 0.1-1.0. A MAR index greater than 0.2 was observed in 43(91.5%) bacterial isolates. Of the bacterial isolates resistant to either ceftazidime or ceftriaxone or both, only 16(42.1%) isolates were found to be positive for ESBL enzyme by double disc synergy test, mostly among E. coli (43.8%), and P. aeruginosa (31.3%). Of these, only 6(37.5%) isolates harbour the ESBL-encoding genes: blaTEM, blaSHV, or both. The blaTEM and blaSHV ESBL-encoding genes were detected in 4(66.7%) and 3(50.0%) isolates, respectively, whereas 1(16.7%) isolate harboured both blaTEM and blaSHV. The presence of potential pathogenic, drug-resistant, and ESBL-producing Gram-negative bacteria on office door handles in this study area is of public health importance. This is because organisms carrying ESBL genes exhibit resistance to first-line antibiotics and a broad spectrum of other critical antibiotic classes.
Keywords:
Enterobacterales,
Pseudomonas,
Door handle,
ESBL,
MDR