Ann Pharmacol Pharm | Volume 4, Issue 2 | Research Article | Open Access
Xinxing Wang1,2, Zhenzhen Zhai3, Xiaonan Zhao4, Hongna Zhang5, Hanming Jiang6, Shuying Yi6, Jing Zhai4* and Weishan Chang1*
1College of Animal Science and Technology, Shandong Agricultural University, China 2School of Public Health, Taishan Medical University, China 3Postdoctoral Scientific Research Station, Taian City Central Hospital, China 4Institute of Animal Science and Veterinary Medicine, Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China 5Department of Teaching Affairs, Hebei University of Economics and Business, China 6College of Basic Medicine, Taishan Medical University, Tai’an, China
*Correspondance to: Weishan Chang
Fulltext PDFThe antibiotic resistance gene mcr-1 is widespread in domestic and wild animals. Therefore, continuous monitoring of its prevalence and characteristics is required. In this study, we developed a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR)-based method to detect mcr-1 of Escherichia coli in rabbits of Tai’an, China, and determined the characteristics of mcr-1-bearing plasmids. A total of 55 non-duplicated E. coli was recovered from the swabs of rabbit feces. Plasmid profiling, plasmid and chromosome PCR, a conjugation experiment, lactose fermentation experiment, multilocus sequence typing, and polymyxin resistance tests were performed to determine the characteristics of mcr-1-bearing plasmids. Bacterial plasmids and chromosome DNA were separately extracted and amplified by PCR with mcr-1-specific primers. Eight of the 55 specimens were mcr-1-positive, for a positive rate of 14.6%. Although mcr-1 was successfully amplified with PCR from bacterial plasmids, it could not be amplified from bacterial chromosome DNA. The mcr-1-positive E. coli harbored more drug-resistant genes compared with the mcr-1-negative specimens, and results showed diverse sequence types. Overall, these findings suggest the possible threat of the transmission of mcr-1 from rabbits to humans, especially since the gene is located on transferable plasmids making horizontal transfer relatively easy. Since food-producing animals are necessary for our daily diet, worldwide cooperation is needed in fighting the spread of this drug resistance gene to avoid human infections with multidrug-resistant pathogenic bacteria.
Rabbits; MCR-1; Prevalence; Plasmids; Escherichia coli
Wang X, Zhai Z, Zhao X, Zhang H, Jiang H, Yi S, et al. Prevalence and Characteristics of Escherichia coli MCR-1 - Like in Rabbits in Shandong, China. Ann Pharmacol Pharm. 2019;4(2):1169.