Pranabika Singha, Anand Prakash Maurya, Debadatta Dhar (Chanda), Atanu Chakravarty, and Amitabha Bhattacharjee
The aim of the study was to assess the prevalence of sulfonamide resistance and their association with integron among Escherichia coli from hospital patients of Silchar Medical College. Out of 177 consecutive, non- duplicate clinical isolates of Enterobacteriaceae resistance pattern against 5 antimicrobial agents assessed by disc diffusion and minimum inhibition concentration. Presence of class I integronassociated integrase (intI) gene, as well as the presence of multiple sul genes was detected using gene specific PCR. 60 isolates were resistant to one or more of the tested antimicrobial drugs, with highest resistance (94.4%) observed against cotrimoxazole. Integrase PCR showed 90 isolates harboring class I. Among the test isolates 57 isolates were found carry both sul1 and sul2 whereas sul3 gene was present only in 3 isolates. This study could conclude that genetic background of sulphonamide resistance is diverse within single hospital setting in our area.
