Abid Mahmood, Karamat Ahmed Karamat, Zahur, Masood Siddiq, Bashir Ahmed, Azhar Mubarik, Abdus Sattar.
Bacterial spectrum of acute infectious diarrhoea and antibiotic susceptibility pattern of the isolates at PNS Shifa, Karachi.
Pak J Pathol Jan ;10(4):15-8.

Acute infectious diarrhea is one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality world wide. A varied range of bacterial pathogens infect the gastrointestinal tract in our country. This study was carried out to know the type of bacterial pathogens involved and their antibiotic sensitivity pattern. A total of 820 stool specimens from patients with symptoms of acute diarrhoea were cultured from May 1996 to Aug. 1997. One hundred and eight bacterial pathogens were recovered with a positively rate of 13.17%. The pathogens isolated include Vibrio cholerae (29.62%), Enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (28.70%), Shigella spp (3.70%%), and Yersinia enterocolitica (1.80%). Most of the isolates were found resistant to ampicillin (73.69%), co-trimoxazole (67.65%) and chloramphenicol (51.84°/a). All the isolates were found sensitive to the quinolones including nalidixic acid, norfloxacin and ciprofloxacin. Our study shows that a variety of bacterial pathogens are responsible for diarrhoeal diseases in our country. Most of these agents have become resistant to the conventional antibiotics in southern part of the country. Hence, the only choice left for effective empirical antibiotic treatment of bacterial diarrhoeas is, one of the quinolones.

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