Antimicrobial resistance patterns of the pathogenic bacteria isolated from stool cultures of patients with acute diarrhea in Istanbul, Turkey

We isolated 1153(24.8%) pathogenic bacteria from 4741 stool samples of diarrheic patients. The distribution of bacteria were as follows: 531(46%) Shigella spp., 197(17.1%) non-typhoid Salmonella, 10(0.86%) S. typhi, 140(12%) Aeromonas spp., 120(10.4%) EPEC and 155(13%) Campylobacter. spp. Antimicrobial resistance of these strains except Campylobacter spp. were assessed by disc diffusion method. Many strains of Salmonella, Shigella, Aeromonas genera and EPEC were resistant to ampicillin and sulbactam-ampicillin(20-97%), cotrimoxazole(10-45%). The strains were variably resistant to cefotaxime or ceftriaxone(0-34%), gentamicin(0-30%), tetracycline(20-53%), chloramphenicol (20-48%). All of them were susceptible to ciprofloxacin and imipenem. Our results show that multi-drug resistant Salmonella and Shigella strains are becoming prevalent in Istanbul and that quinolones may be preferred for empirical therapy