The importance of pets as reservoirs of resistant Enterococcus strains, with special reference to vancomycin

The purpose of the present study was to determine the prevalence of antibiotic resistance, with special attention to vancomycin, in 104 strains of Enterococcus, which is the sentinel bacterium isolated from dog and cat faeces samples. The phenotypic characterization of the isolates classified them as E. faecium (58%), E. avium (41%) and E. faecalis (1%). Sensitivity testing used the diffusion method according to the recommendations of CASFM (Comite de l'Antibiogramme de la Société Française de Microbiogie), to oxacillin, amoxycillin, amoxycilin + clavulanic acid, ampicillin, piperacillin, cefoperazone, imipenem, enrofloxacin, ciprofloxacin, ofloxacin, nalidixic acid, tetracycline, lincomycin, erythromicin and vancomycin. Minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) determination by E test revealed a MIC to vancomycin of between 0.5 microg/ml and 3 microg/ml. All the strains were resistant to nalidixic acid, erythromycin, cefoperazone and oxacillin. We detected resistance to amoxycillin + clavulanic acid in 1.9% of isolates, to amoxycillin in 4.8%, to piperacillin in 13.5%, and to ampicillin in 21.2% of strains. A high prevalence of antibiotic resistance to lincomycin, tetracycline, enrofloxacin, ciprofloxacin and ofloxacin was found in 98.1%, 95.2%, 76.9%, 73.1% and 64.4% of strains, respectively. Resistance to vancomycin was not found, which indicates that there is no transmission risk of vancomycin-resistant enterococcal strains to man or transfer of their resistance genes to other bacteria belonging to the endogenous flora of humans.