Isolation and Characterisation of Antibiotic Resistance Escherichia coli from Wild Animals kept at Bikaner Zoo Rajasthan, India

Antimicrobial resistance is a matter of great concern due to the reduced efficacy or failures of antibiotics to treat various bacterial infections. At present, there are few reports available on the isolation and prevalence of antibiotic resistance genes on E. coli found in wild captive animal species. Therefore, the present study was conducted to investigate the phenotypic and genotypic properties of E. coli isolates obtained from wild captive animals at Bikaner Zoo in regard to their antibiotic resistance. In the present study, a total of 41 E. coli isolates obtained from Boselaphus tragocamelus (5), Antelope cervicapra (18) and Gazella gazelle (18) maintained at Bikaner Zoo (Rajasthan) were subjected to antibiogram determination against 15 antibiotics belonging to four different classes and were also genotyped for detecting presence of blaTEM, sul-2, strA and aadA genes. Antimicrobial susceptibility was performed by the agar disc diffusion method. The polymerase chain reaction was carried out with a Veriti 96 well thermocycler to detect the presence of the identified genes amplified through specific primers. Antibiogram study revealed the highest efficacy of ciprofloxacin (90.2%) followed by nalidixic acid (75.6%) and chloramphenicol (68.4%) and high resistance to
lactam, Sulfamethoxazole and Aminoglycoside antibiotics. The overall presence of blaTEM, sul-2, strA and aadA genes was detected in 95.12%, 80.48%, 60.97% and 87.8% in isolates. This study's findings reveal that wild captive animals may act as a reservoir of antibiotic resistant genes which may be mobilized into other ecological populations. The data from the present study accounts for the critical need for regulation of antimicrobial drug usage in wild captive animals and highlights for continuous monitoring of antibiotic resistance.