Veterinary session

Escherichia coli is a widely distributed bacterium and it takes part in the establishment of the normal intestinal flora. Nonetheless, several E. coli strains are pathogenic and cause illnesses. Its wide distribution and its genom’s plasticity give chance harbouring several virulence and antibiotic genes. These genes can be spread between cohabiting bacterial species with horizontal gene transfer.

Plasmid encoded colistin (mcr-1) resistance gene is belong to this group. Colistin or polimixin E is a cationic polypeptid antibiotic. Hospitals reserve colistin as a last resort antibiotic against multiresistant bacteria. However, resistance against colistin emerged similarly for another antibiotics and made drugs uneffective against these bacteria. Colistin resistance spread mainly in the Enterobacteriaceae family. This resistance gene was written down in several countries, mainly in pigs. The spreading of mcr-1 is important because zoonotic bacteria can harbour it. In Hungary nobody wrote down the existence of this gene yet. Therefore, our aim was to investigate five mostly kept poultry species about the mcr-1 carrying status.

Altogether, we collected 332 cloacal swabs from goose, duck, turkey, chicken and pigeon. We isolated 319 E. coli strains from them. We found only one duck sample was suspicious for mcr-1 gene by PCR. Our suspicion was verified by Sanger sequencing and investigation of the got amplicon base sequence. The whole genom sequencing confirms further it beside another antibiotic resistance gene harbouring. Therefore, our strains was mcr-1 carrying multidrug resistant E. coli.

Main result of this study that we could firstly isolate and describe plasmid encoded colistin (mcr-1) resistant E. coli from farm animal. The comprehensive examination of the genom will serve the base of future study, thus these informations cannot be the part of this manuscript.