Prevalence of drug-resistant and multidrug resistant Escherichia coli in raw chicken meat samples collected from Jalandhar district of Punjab, India

Abstract

Escherichia coli is an extremely common and vastly widespread bacterial species occurs in food and water and causing a large number of food born infections worldwide. E. coli has been being extremely reported to be present in raw chicken meat samples as a common contaminant and pose a severe threat to consumer health. In this context, the aim of the presented study was to identify the frequency of drug-resistant and multidrug-resistant E. coli in raw chicken meat samples collected from retail meat shops in Jalandhar district of Punjab, India and to study the efficacy of antibiotics commonly applied towards them. Among 86 chicken meat samples subjected to the selective isolation of E. coli, 32 (37.20%) samples were found to be positive. Further, most of the E. coli isolates exhibited drug resistant towards at least one antibiotic, while a large number of E. coli isolates demonstrated drug resistant towards multiple drugs, thus found to be multi drug resistance (MDR). The outcome of this study highlight on the prevalence of drug-resistant and multidrug-resistant E. coli in retail chicken meat samples in Jalandhar, which emphasizes on the need of taking necessary actions to counter this problem well in time.