Vancomycin-resistant enterococcus faecalis among patients with urinary tract infection at aminu kano teaching hospital

Background: Emergence of vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) has become a serious issue for nosocomial infection control worldwide. The increase in antibiotic resistance among enterococci, specifically to vancomycin, has become a major clinical and epidemiological problem. Aim: The study aimed at the identification, phenotypic characterization of Enterococcus faecalis, and susceptibility pattern of vancomycin on E. faecalis associated with urinary tract infection (UTI) on patients admitted to the female medical ward and postnatal ward of Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Kano, Nigeria. Materials and Methods: A total of 114 urine samples were aseptically collected from patients suspected with UTI and cultured on blood agar and cystine–lactose–electrolyte-deficient agar and incubated under anaerobic and aerobic environment, respectively, at 37°C for 24 h. Bacterial growth was subjected to standard methods for the identification of E. faecalis and tested for their antibiotic susceptibility patterns on vancomycin (30 μg), ciprofloxacin (10 μg), streptomycin (10 μg), chloramphenicol (30 μg), tetracycline (10 μg), and co-trimoxazole (25 μg) (Oxoid, UK) using disk diffusion method. Minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) of vancomycin were determined. ATCC E. faecalis 29,212 was used as control organism for every test run. Data generated were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results: A total of 8 (7.0%) E. faecalis were isolated from 114 samples studied. The prevalence of 50.0% and 25.0% VRE was obtained by disk diffusion and broth dilution methods, respectively. The result of antibiotics susceptibility pattern revealed that 6 (75.0%) of the E. faecalis isolates show multiple resistance to tetracycline (30 μg), co-trimoxazole (1.25/23.75 μg), and streptomycin (10 μg), but more sensitive to ciprofloxacin (5 μg) and chloramphenicol (30 μg). The MIC result revealed that vancomycin has high effect at lower concentration of 4 and 2 μg/ml and loses its effect at increase concentration of 8, 16, 32, and 64 μg/ml, and the result obtained from the MBC of vancomycin revealed that it has only a bacteriostatic effect against E. faecalis. Conclusion: Therefore, ciprofloxacin and chloramphenicol are the best therapeutic options to treat infection with VRE in Kano, and treatment with the resistant drugs obtained may affect feature treatment and management of infection with these drugs.