All issues > Volume 14(8); 1971

Original Article

J Korean Pediatr Soc. 1971;14(8):494-500. Published online August 31, 1971.

Drug Resistance and Transferable Drug Resistance of Escherichiacoli Isolated from Newborn Infants and Infancy

Jung Hi Oh¹

¹Dept, of pediatrics, Chonnam University Medical School

Abstract

One hundred fourty infants were subjected to study on the isolation frequency of Escherichia coli, sensitivity of the isolates to antibacterial drugs, and the distribution of Rfactor. No strain was isolated from, the infants under one hour of age. However, Escherichia coli strains were isolated from newborn infants between 24 hours and 72 hours with the frequency of 38. 2%. Among 76 strains of Escherichia coli isolated, 63 strains (82. 9%) were resistant to one or more of 6 antibacterial agents snch as ampicillin(AP), kanamycin(KM), streptomycin(SM), cholam- phenicol(CP), tetracycline(TC), and nalidixic acid(NA). Among 63 resistant strains the most frequency found resistance was SM(81%),followed in the decreasing order of resistance by TC(58.7%),AP(42.9%),CP(38.1%) and NA(4.8%). None of the strains was resistant to KM. Fourteen different drug resistant patterns were found and the mostfrequently encountered resistant pattern was TC SM CP, and multiple resistance strains was greater than single in the number of the strains and in the transferability of resistance. Eleven different R factors were isolated from resistant strains. Among them R(TC CP) factor was isolated most frequently. The percentage with resistant or R factor—carring Escherichia coli in the group of infants who had been treated with antibacterial agents were lower than in the group of infants who had not been treated, indicating that there is little correlation between pre-vious antibacterial therapy and the occurence of resistant Escherichia coli.

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