TY - JOUR AU - Bartoloni, Alessandro AU - Pallecchi, Lucia AU - Benedetti, Marta AU - Fernandez, Connie AU - Vallejos, Yolanda AU - Guzman, Elisa AU - Villagran, Ana Liz AU - Mantella, Antonia AU - Lucchetti, Chiara AU - Bartalesi, Filippo AU - Strohmeyer, Marianne AU - Bechini, Angela AU - Gamboa, Herlan AU - Rodríguez, Hugo AU - Falkenberg, Torkel AU - Kronvall, Göran AU - Gotuzzo, Eduardo AU - Paradisi, Franco AU - Rossolini, Gian Maria T1 - Multidrug-resistant Commensal Escherichia coli in Children, Peru and Bolivia T2 - Emerging Infectious Disease journal PY - 2006 VL - 12 IS - 6 SP - 907 SN - 1080-6059 AB - Using a rapid screening method, we investigated the prevalence of fecal carriage of antimicrobial drug–resistant Escherichia coli in 3,174 healthy children from 4 urban settings in Peru and Bolivia. High resistance rates were observed for ampicillin (95%), trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (94%), tetracycline (93%), streptomycin (82%), and chloramphenicol (70%). Lower resistance rates were observed for nalidixic acid (35%), kanamycin (28%), gentamicin (21%), and ciprofloxacin (18%); resistance to ceftriaxone and amikacin was uncommon (<0.5%). In a random sample of 1,080 resistant E. coli isolates, 90% exhibited a multidrug-resistance (MDR) phenotype. The 2 most common MDR phenotypes (ampicillin/tetracycline/trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole and ampicillin/tetracycline/trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole/chloramphenicol) could be transferred en bloc in conjugation experiments. The most common acquired resistance genes were blaTEM, tet(A), tet(B), drfA8, sul1, sul2, and catI. These findings underscore the magnitude of the problem of antimicrobial drug resistance in low-resource settings and the urgent need for surveillance and control of this phenomenon. KW - Escherichia coli KW - antimicrobial resistance KW - commensal bacteria KW - resistance surveillance KW - Peru KW - Bolivia KW - research DO - 10.3201/eid1206.051258 UR - https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/12/6/05-1258_article ER - End of Reference