Infectious Diseases

Salmonella infections represent one of the primary causes of food borne diseases with a relevant impact on developing countries. The increase of antimicrobial resistance is also a major health concern, seriously limiting the control of invasive salmonellosis. Despite a paucity of available data Salmonella infections are clear an emerging problem in several North-African countries and food borne Salmonella outbreaks are also commonly observed in Algeria. In this work we provide genotypic and antimicrobial susceptibility baseline data of 46 Salmonella from human (n=17) and avian (n=29) origin isolated in Algeria during 2015-2016. The isolates were mostly resistant to nalidixic acid (93%) followed by streptomycin (63%), tetracycline (47%), ampicillin (43%), ciprofloxacin (26%) chloramphenicol (22%), trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (17%) and ceftriaxone (8%). Sixty percent of the isolates were multidrug resistant and 98% carried one or two plasmids ranging in size from 5 to 150 kb belonging to IncFIIA, N, I1, FIB and P groups. Among human isolates, an intact Salmonella Genomic Island 1 (SGI1) was detected in 8 S. Typhimurium DT104 carrying two integrons of 1 and 1.2 kb and in three serogroup C2-C3strains carrying one integron of 1.6 kb with the cassettes aac(3)-Id/aadA7 plus sul1.TEM-1and CTX-M1 beta-lactamases genes were detected in six and two isolates respectively. These findings improve the information on food borne Salmonella in Algeria, evidencing the presence of MDR strains potentially dangerous to humans and provide useful data to health control authorities for the prevention of these infections.