The use of antibiotics and resistance patterns of bacterial isolates from selected fish farms in the Ashanti Region of Ghana

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MAY, 2016
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Abstract
Antibiotics may be used in fish farms to prevent or treat bacterial infections especially in hatcheries. This affects a wide range of bacteria and has potential impact on receiving water bodies and fish pathogens and has been reported to contribute to antibiotic resistance in other parts of the world but not reported in Ghana due to the fact that there are no studies conducted. This study was carried out to assess some fish farming practices among catfish and tilapia farmers which may contribute to antibiotic resistance as well as to determine the susceptibilities of Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Shigella species, Salmonella typhi and Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolated from fish pond water, catfish gut and tilapia gut from 11 farms and 2 hatcheries to penicillin, ampicillin, flucloxacillin, erythromycin, tetracycline, sulphamethoxazole/trimethoprim, cefuroxime, gentamicin, ciprofloxacin and chloramphenicol using the disc diffusion method. Validated questionnaires were administered to 63 fish farmers in six zones of the Ministry of Fisheries-Ashanti Region. 73% of farmers claimed not to use antibiotics on their farms. Three farmers (4.8%) used tetracycline on the fish farms whilst two hatchery farmers add antibiotics (tetracycline or chloramphenicol) to fish feed. 93.6% of respondents who use manure on fish farms use poultry manure from commercial poultry farms and use it mainly to fertilize fish ponds. With the exception of gentamicin and ciprofloxacin, there was varying resistance of more than 60% to the other antibiotics. Generally, isolates showed high resistance to penicillin, ampicillin, flucloxacillin and tetracycline whilst low resistance was observed in all isolates to gentamicin (1.7% to 5.6%) except in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. 44.9% to 92.9% of isolates of organisms showed resistance to more than 3 antibiotics. In conclusion, even though there was no recent history of antibiotic use in most of the farms studied, there was multidrug resistance in isolates.
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A thesis submitted to The Department of Pharmaceutics in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the degree of Master of Philosophy (Mphil) in Pharmaceutical Microbiology.
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