Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-sh8wx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-20T07:07:23.375Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The incidence of antibiotic resistance and other characteristics amongst Escherichia coli strains causing fatal infection in chickens: the utilization of these characteristics to study the epidemiology of the infection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2009

E. D. Heller  and
H. Williams Smith
E. D. Heller
Affiliation:
Houghton Poultry Research Station, Houghton, Huntingdon PE17 2DA
H. Williams Smith
Affiliation:
Houghton Poultry Research Station, Houghton, Huntingdon PE17 2DA
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Summary

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Of 173 epidemiologically unrelated strains of Escherichia coli isolated from the pericardial sac of chickens that had died from infection with these organisms in England in 1972, approximately 1 year after the introduction of legislation forbidding the routine use of feeds containing ‘therapeutic’ antibiotics, 83·8% were resistant to sulphonamides, 31·2 % to tetracyclines, 20·8% to furazolidone, 18·5% to streptomycin, 2·9% to spectinomycin and 1·2% to ampicillin; none of the strains were resistant to chloramphenicol, neomycin, polymixin, trimethoprim or nalidixic acid. The sulphonamide resistance and possibly some of the resistance to other agents might have been the consequence of sulphonamides being exempted from the legislation. Much of the resistance, with the exception of that to furazolidone, was of the transferable type. Many strains possessed transfer factors in the absence of any known transferable characteristic. Colicine production was twice as common in the pathogenic strains as in a collection of strains isolated from the faeces of healthy chickens; about half of it was transferable.

By means of serology, antibiotic resistance and other markers, it was found that several different kinds of E. coli were usually incriminated in any one outbreak of E. coli infection in broiler chickens. Sometimes the same kinds of E. coli were found in outbreaks in consecutive crops of chickens on the same farm. New kinds, too, appeared to be brought in by replacement chickens.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Hygiene , Volume 71 , Issue 4 , December 1973 , pp. 771 - 781
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

References

REFERENCES

Anderson, E. S. (1965). A rapid screening test for transfer factor in drug sensitive Entero-bacteriaceae. Nature, London 208, 1016–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harry, E. G. (1964). A study of 119 outbreaks of coli septicaemia in broiler flocks. Veterinary Record 76, 443–8.Google Scholar
Harry, E. G. & Hemsley, L. A. (1965). The relationship between environmental contamination with septicaemia strains of Escherichia coli and their incidence in chickens. Veterinary Record 77, 241–5.Google ScholarPubMed
Hemsley, L. A. & Harry, E. G. (1965). Coliform pericarditis (colisepticaemia) in broiler chickens: a three year study on one farm. Veterinary Record 77, 103–7.Google Scholar
Lewis, M. J. (1968). Transferable drug resistance and other transferable agents in strains of Escherichia coli from two human populations. Lancet i, 1389–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Report (1969). Report of the Joint Committee on the Use of Antibiotics in Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine. London: H.M.S.O.Google Scholar
Smith, H. W. (1966). The incidence of infective drug resistance in strains of Escherichia coli isolated from diseased human beings and domestic animals. Journal of Hygiene 64, 465–74.Google ScholarPubMed
Smith, H. W. (1970). The transfer of antibiotic resistance between strains of enterobacteria in chickens, calves and pigs. Journal of Medical Microbiology 3, 165–80.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smith, H. W. & Crabb, W. E. (1957). The effect of the continuous administration of diet containing low levels of tetracycline on the incidence of drug resistant Bacterium coli in the faeces of pigs and chickens: the sensitivity of the Bact. coli to other chemotherapeutic agents. Veterinary Record 69, 24–30.Google Scholar
Smith, H. W. & Gyles, C. L. (1970). The relationship between different transmissible plasmids introduced by F into the same strain of Escherichia coli K 12. Journal of General Microbiology 62, 277–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, H. W. & Halls, S. (1967). The transmissible nature of the genetic factor of Escherichia coli that controls haemolysin production. Journal of General Microbiology 47, 153–61.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smith, H. W. & Linggood, M. A. (1970). Transfer factors in Escherichia coli with particular regard to their incidence in enteropathogenic strains. Journal of General Microbiology 62, 287–99.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sojka, W. J. & Carnaghan, R. B. A. (1961). Escherichia coli infection in poultry. Research in Veterinary Science 2, 340–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar