Study of Antimicrobial Resistant Gram Negative Bacteria in Chicken and Pork Meat Around Kathmandu District, Nepal

The increasing trend of multidrug resistance in Gram-negative bacteria (MDR-GNB) has been a major concern for the healthcare settings in Nepal and globally. In Nepal, previous studies on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) have received limited attention to animal-sourced food, which represents a significant route for the zoonotic transmission of antibiotic-resistant pathogens. This study aimed to assess antibiotic resistance, multidrug resistance patterns of Gram-negative bacteria isolated from intestinal and gizzard samples of chicken and pork meat collected from 5 municipalities in Kathmandu. From total of 13 samples collected, comprising 11 chicken and 2 pork intestinal and gizzard meat samples, 136 gram negative bacteria were isolated. Subsequently, the isolated bacteria underwent susceptibility testing against 16 different antibiotics. The bacterial isolates, representing eleven distinct types, were successfully identified: Escherichia coli (33.82%) and Shigella spp. (11.76%) were the predominant bactera followed by Yersinia (8.8%), Citrobacter (8.8%), Proteus (8.8%), Klebsiella (5.1%), and Plesiomonas (5.1%), among others. Notably, the prevalence of multidrug-resistant bacteria was alarmingly high, with half(50%) of the whole isolates exhibiting resistance to multiple classes of antibiotics and on comparative analysis of Chicken and Pork meat, the MDR was higher among the chicken sample than in the pork meat sample. Additionally, 73.9% of E. coli , 14.28% of Klebsiella , 58.33% of Yersinia and 41.67% of Citrobacter are found to be multidrug resistant. Thus, this study showed that the meat samples were loaded with multidrug-resistant gram-negative bacteria and there is the high risk of food-borne infection and contact-exposure transmission to slaughterhouse worker by pathogenic microbes calling for AMR monitoring and mitigation strategies.