Huys, Geert and Gevers, Dirk and Temmerman, Robin and Cnockaert, Margo and Denys, Rik and Rhodes, Glenn and Pickup, Roger and McGann, Patrick and Hiney, Maura and Smith, Peter and Swings, Jean (2001) Comparison of the antimicrobial tolerance of oxytetracycline-resistant heterotrophic bacteria isolated from hospital sewage and freshwater fishfarm water in Belgium. Systematic and Applied Microbiology, 24 (1). pp. 122-130. ISSN 0723-2020
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between antimicrobial tolerance and taxonomic diversity among the culturable oxytetracycline-resistant (Otr) heterotrophic bacterial population in two Belgian aquatic sites receiving wastewater either from human medicine or from aquaculture. The study of Otr heterotrophs and mesophilic Aeromonas spp. allowed comparison of tolerance data at the intergenus as well as at the intragenus level. In total, 354 independently obtained Otr isolates were subjected to antimicrobial tolerance testing and identified by GLC analysis of their cellular fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs), by API 20E profiling and/or by Fluorescent Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (FAFLP) DNA fingerprinting. In general, Otr hospital heterotrophs displayed a higher frequency (84%) of ampicillin (Amp) tolerance compared to the Otr heterotrophs from the freshwater fishfarm site (22%). FAME results indicated that this effect was linked to the predominance of intrinsically ampicillin-resistant Otr Aeromonas strains over representatives of Acinetobacter and Escherichia coli within the hospital strain set. Among the Otr mesophilic Aeromonas strain set, the global tolerance profiles of the two sites only differed in a higher number of kanamycin (Kan) -tolerant strains (43%) for hospital aeromonads in comparison with the fishfarm aeromonads (8%). To some extent, this finding was correlated with the specific presence of Aeromonas caviae DNA hybridisation group (HG) 4. Collectively, these results suggest that the profiles for Amp and Kan tolerance observed in both sites arose from taxonomic differences in the culturable Otr bacterial population at the generic or subgeneric level. In addition, our identification data also revealed that Enterobacter sp., Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, and A. veronii biovar sobria HG8 may be considered potential indicator organisms to assess microbial tolerance in various compartments of the aquatic environment.