Prevalence and antibiotic susceptibility of Pasteurella multocida in cattle and buffaloes

Abstract

Pasteurella multocida (P. multocida) infection is considered one of the highly contagious diseases causing pneumonia in bovine with devastating economic setbacks globally. Recently, inappropriate usage of antimicrobial in treatment and control makes P. multocida resistance to the most prescribed veterinary antibiotics. The current study aimed to detect P. multocida in apparently healthy and diseased (170) cattle and (174) buffalo in four Egyptian governorates, defined some of epidemiological aspect, phenotypic and genotypic detection of antimicrobial resistance of P. multocida strains. The overall prevalence in examined cattle and buffalo was 21.2%. The   highest infection was in young male (41.5%) in Cairo governorate (24.5%). The antimicrobial susceptibility test of P. multocida isolates showed high prevalence of multi-drug resistance to more than one antimicrobial group as high resistance was recorded against Penicillin-G, Ampicillin, oxytetracycline, streptomycin and sulfamethoxazole-trimethoprim but sensitive to cefquinome. The antimicrobial resistant pattern was confirmed by detection of four antimicrobial resistance genes (tetH, ermX, blaROB1 and aphA1) in four phenotypically drug resistance isolates. The four isolates revealed positive results for resistance genes by PCR assay except one isolate was negative for ermX gene. The result confirms the necessity of reliable use of antimicrobials to avoid the development drug resistance and decrease the economic losses in animal production.