Jm. Ling et al., EMERGING RESISTANCE IN SALMONELLA-ENTERICA SEROTYPE TYPHI IN HONG-KONG, International journal of antimicrobial agents, 7(3), 1996, pp. 161-166
A total of 182 Salmonella enterica serotype Typhi isolated from three
hospitals in Hong Kong from 1986 to 1992 were tested for their suscept
ibility to 21 antimicrobial agents, Four percent or less were resistan
t to chloramphenicol, ampicillin, some of the cephalosporins, nalidixi
c acid, tetracycline and trimethoprim and 6% to 1024 mg/l sulfamethoxa
zole, All were susceptible to the aminoglycosides and the 4-quinolones
. Nineteen isolates were resistant to at least 1, and up to 9, antibio
tics, Of 8 chloramphenicolor multiply-resistant isolates studied, only
3 could transfer their resistances while resistance of one could only
be mobilized, Four of 5 ampicillin-resistant strains produced a beta-
lactamase of pI 5.5. Antibiotic resistances were mediated by plasmids
of 106, 116 or 221 kb of incompatibility groups H, I1 and K. Three res
istant isolates did not harbour any plasmid, A total of 43 (24%) S. Ty
phi harboured plasmids ranging in size from 4.3 to 221 kb, Plasmids of
106 kb and 8.5 kb were found in 17 and 10 isolates, respectively, Res
triction enzyme digestion of these two plasmids showed that each could
be differentiated into 3 types, Of 89 isolates that were phage typed,
38% were untypable, while 17% and 12% were of phage types E1 and A, r
espectively, and the rest belonged to 17 other types.