ISOLATION AND ANTIBIOTIC SUSCEPTIBILITY OF CLOSTRIDIUM DIFFICLE

Clostridium difficile is a gram-positive rod bacillus that forms spores found in the normal gut microbiota of 1-3 percent of healthy individuals and 15-20 percent of babies. Clostridium difficile is a common cause of infections in hospitals, and it is transferred mostly by the fecal-oral route. Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) is an emerging health problem in hospital setting. The ability of the spores to persist in the environment is a key factor in rates of infection. Clostridium difficile has also been described as one of the leading cause of nosocomial diarrhea. It is responsible for an increase in hospital stay with high healthcare and economic repercussions. It causes a serious toxic- mediated enteric diseases in humans. This study aimed to investigate the isolation and antibiotic susceptibility of Clostridium difficile from clinical samples. A total of 49 samples comprising of sea food (5), wastewater (7), soil (16) and stool (21) samples were collected for this study. Isolation was carried out using C. difficile base CHROMagar in an anaerobic condition, while identification was done using morphological and biochemical tests. Antibiotic Clostridium difficile and was tested for their susceptibility to eight antimicrobials via disc diffusion method. The occurrence of C. difficile in the samples was 30.61% (15/49), with 3, 5, 2 and 5 isolates from stool, sea food, wastewater and soil samples, respectively. All the isolates have the characteristics morphological features of C. difficile on Chromogenic agar. The highest antibiotic susceptibility test of the isolates was recorded with tetracycline (73.3%), followed by Chloramphenicol (73%), Erythromycin (67%), Ciprofloxacin (67%), Ampicillin (67%), Vancomycin (66.7%), Metronidazole (53%) and Gentamicin (47%).