Prevalence and antimicrobial resistance profile of enterobacteria isolated from psittaciformes of illegal wildlife trade

ABSTRACT

Background: The psittacine are birds frequently commercialized in illegal wildlife trade and when apprehended by the responsible public departments are often found in poor sanitary conditions. In these cases, these birds become susceptible to several pathogens, such as the enterobacteria, which some are important poultry pathogens and other bacterial species may be found in the intestinal microbiota, but may also cause intestinal and extraintestinal opportunistic infections. Therefore, this study aimed to identify the prevalence of enterobacteria in the intestinal microbiota of psittacine from the illegal wildlife trade and to evaluate the antimicrobial resistance profiles in the isolated samples.Materials, Methods & Results: A total of 167 individual cloacal swabs were collected from apparently healthy psittacines, who were housed in the local Wildlife Rehabilitation Center (Centro de Triagem de Animais Selvagens - CETAS) in Fortaleza, CE, Brazil. Initially, samples were submitted to the microbiological procedure, with the following steps: preenrichment, selective enrichment and plating. Biochemical tests were used to the identify the species of enterobacteria. The samples with biochemical profile of Salmonella spp. were submitted to slide agglutination test using polyvalent “O” serum anti-Salmonella. To perform the antibiotic susceptibility testing, all the strains isolated were cultured in BHI broth, and then streaked in MacConkey agar. After this step, colonies were inoculated in tubes containing sterile saline solution. Then, the diluted cultures were plated with the aid of sterile swabs on plates containing Mueller-Hinton agar. Then, the following antimicrobial discs were added to the plates ceftiofur, ciprofloxacin, enrofloxacin, streptomycin, gentamycin, sulfonamide, sulfamethoxazole-trimethoprim, nalidixic acid, ampicillin, polymyxin B, tetracycline and azithromycin.[...](AU)