Bacteriological Profile and Antibiotic Resistance Patterns of Pus/Wound Samples in Humans with Infected Wounds in North Central Algeria

The present study was carried out between 2016 and 2020 in Makour Hamou Public Hospital, Ain Defla district, North Centre of Algeria. The study aimed to characterise the antimicrobial resistance and multidrug resistance in bacteria isolated from 620 patients with purulent skin wounds. Out of the 428 bacterial isolates, 283 were Gram-positive (66.12 ± 4.48%) (P<0.001). A total number of 77 Staphylococcus aureus isolates were obtained, among them 31.2 ± 9.3% (24/77) were methicillin-resistant. The most frequent Gram-negative bacteria were Escherichia coli (30.34±7.4%), followed by Klebsiella pneumoniae (25.52±7.10%), and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (23.45±6.70%). All Staphylococcus aureus isolates (77/77) were sensitive to clindamycin. Escherichia coli isolates were resistant to several antibiotics with high resistance rates to amoxicillin (38/44; 86.4 ± 10.1%), amoxicillin-clavulanate (30/44; 68.2 ± 13.8%), cefazolin (21/44; 47.7 ± 7.5%) and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (16/44; 36.4 ± 14.2%) (P<0.001). All Gram-negative bacteria were sensitive to amikacin (145/145) and only one Gram-positive isolate (99.65 ± 0.69%) was resistant to vancomycin. Multidrug resistance was observed in 31.54% of isolates; it was significantly higher in Gram-negative compared to Gram-positive bacteria (62/145; 42.76 ± 8% and 73/283; 25.79 ± 5.10%, respectively) (P<0.001). Multidrug resistance rate was significantly correlated to patients’ age (P<0.001) but not according to years. These results showed the presence of different bacteria species from human wound infections. The resistance to one or multiple antibiotics were frequent. It is recommended to reduce irrational use of antibiotics and a more frequent use of antibiogram before any antibiotic prescription.