Typhoid Fever: A threatening prevalent disease worldwide

Typhoid fever is considered as a most significant systemic ailment worldwide and it is prevalent in those regions where hygiene and sanitation is insufficient. Unfortunately, it still persists in many countries and it is reported as the only remaining enteric disease for which the death rates have not been reducing, which is an alarming situation¹.

It is caused by Salmonella enterica serovar typhi (S. typhi), which is the major causative agent of enteric fever. Above 21 million cases of typhoid fever has been recorded and some of these cases cause mortality per year throughout the world². This issue is being managed by using antimicrobials. But, frequent use of the same antimicrobials against infections with typhoid fever cause elevated multidrug resistance in S. typhi as well as other bacterial species³.

During recent years, S. typhi has became more resistant towards different antimicrobials including chloramphenicol, ampicillin, sulfonamides as well as tetracycline and therefore, known as multidrug-resistant (MDR)⁴. Multidrug resistant S. typhi is defined as S. typhi isolates which are resistant to three different classes of antimicrobials⁵.

Accordingly, scientists get motivated to perform a new research to study the capability of S. typhi strains isolated from blood of inpatients and outpatients, suffering with typhoid fever to determine antimicrobial resistance associated-genes. For this purpose, disc diffusion method was utilized to examine the capability of S. typhi to resistance of 12 antibiotics. Moreover, Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique was then applied to assess the occurrence of 13 antimicrobials resistance genes⁶.

At the end of this experiment, it was found that Chloramphenicol and ampicillin resistance associated-genes including floR, Cat1 and pse-1 are more prevalent in S. typhi strains isolated from blood of inpatients having typhoid fever as compared to those isolated from blood of outpatients⁶.

Conclusively, this investigation can assist other scientists to apply the ceftriaxone to cure patients, suffering with typhoid fever as well as to build a good image regarding resistance associated-genes in clinical S. typhi strains. Moreover, this study confirmed the presence of S. typhi strains isolated from hospitals patients more virulent in comparison with those isolated from non-hospital patients.

References:

1. Lugito, N.P.H. and Cucunawangsih, 2017. Antimicrobial resistance of Salmonella enterica serovars typhi and paratyphi isolates from a general hospital in Karawaci, Tangerang, Indonesia: A five-year review. Int. J. Microbiology
2. Adesiji, Y.O., V.K. Deekshit and I. Karunasagar, 2014. Antimicrobial‐resistant genes associated with Salmonella spp. isolated from human, poultry and seafood sources. Food Sci. Nutr., 2: 436-442.
3. Dutta, S., S. Das, U. Mitra, P. Jain and I. Roy et al., 2014. Antimicrobial resistance, virulence profiles and molecular subtypes of Salmonella enterica serovars Typhi and Paratyphi a blood isolates from Kolkata, India during 2009-2013. PLoS One, Vol. 9.
4. Das, S., S. Samajpati, U. Ray, I. Roy and S. Dutta, 2017. Antimicrobial resistance and molecular subtypes of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi isolates from Kolkata, India over a 15 years period 1998-2012. Int. J. Med. Microbiol., 307: 28-36.
5. Aljanaby, A.A.J., 2013. Antibacterial activity of an aqueous extract of Petroselinum crispum leaves against pathogenic bacteria isolated from patients with burns infections in Al-Najaf governorate, Iraq. Res. Chem. Intermed., 39: 3709-3714.
6. Ahmed Abduljabbar Jaloob Aljanaby and Ali Reyadh Medhat, 2017. Prevalence of Some Antimicrobials Resistance Associated-genes in Salmonella typhi Isolated from Patients Infected with Typhoid Fever. J. Biol. Sci., 17: 171-184.