Antimicrobial Resistance and Molecular Typing of Pseudomonas aeruginosa Isolated from Surgical Wounds in Lagos, Nigeria

The aim of the study was to determine the resistance patterns of Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates recovered from patients with surgical wounds in hospitals and also to investigate their epidemiological relatedness using molecular typing techniques. Twenty Pseudomonas sp. isolated from surgical wounds were subjected to antibiotic susceptibility testing by disk diffusion, plasmid profile, SDS-PAGE and PCR using the parC, gyr A gene and RAPD using the 1254 primer. The isolates showed resistance to 12 different antibiotics with six being 100% resistant. Plasmids were detected in 16 (80%) of the isolates. The RAPD-PCR using the primer 1254, SDS-PAGE classified the 20 Pseudomonas spp. into 5 and 6 types respectively. Pseudomona aeruginosa strains isolated from surgical wounds were generally resistant to a broad range of antibiotics and this is rather worrisome. The typing techniques classified the 20 isolates into 5 and 6 groups.