Abstract
Aims: Staphylococcus species have been a major human pathogen of public health importance globally. This study was designed to evaluate the resistance pattern and plasmid profile of Staphylococcus species isolated from clinical and community settings. Methodology: Staphylococcus species from clinical (55) and community (53) which were previously isolated in University of Ibadan and her teaching hospital and identified as S. epidermidis (92.6%), S. aureus (6.5%) and S. xylosus (0.9%) were used. The antibiogram and plasmid profiles were determined by standard procedures. Results: In clinical isolates of S. epidermidis, 30.9, 34.5, 40.0, 41.8, 60.0, 76.4, and 89.1% were resistant to chloramphenicol (CHL), streptomycin (STR), erythromycin (ERY), gentamycin (GEN), tetracycline (TET), cotrimoxazole (COT), and cloxacillin (CXC) respectively. Correspondingly, in community isolates of S. epidermidis, 28.3, 32.1, 50.9, 26.4, 58.5, 90.6 and 92.5% were resistant to these antibiotics. The only clinical S. xylosus isolated was resistant to all the antibiotics except CHL and STR. In the clinical isolates of S. aureus, 5.5, 5.5, 7.3, 7.3, 7.3, 9.1 and 9.1% were resistant to ERY, CHL, STR, GEN, TET, COT and CXC respectively. In community isolates, only one S. aureus was resistant to COT, CHL, ERY, GEN and STR while two were resistant to CXC. Plasmid profiling showed that 33/35 (94.3%) of clinical and 17/19 (89.5%) of community isolates had plasmid of size 23.13 kb. Conclusion: The increasing resistance and similarity of plasmid profile of the community isolates to clinical isolates call for urgent establishment of antibiotic surveillance system to minimize the emergence of drug resistance pathogens in the community.
