Multidrug-Resistant Escherichia coli Isolated from Stool Samples of Healthy Infants in Rural Bangladeshi Communities

Escherichia coli (E. coli) is a commensal organism in humans and animals. It can serve as a reservoir for antibiotic resistance, thus providing an indicator of drug resistance patterns in a community. We investigated antibiotic resistance in E. coli isolated from nondiarrheal stool samples of 6-month-old infants (n = 110) from northwest Bangladesh. We conducted susceptibility testing using a disc diffusion assay against 20 antibiotics. Resistance was most pronounced for macrolides (98.2% resistant), whereas the most sensitive antibiotics were fosfomycin (100%), gentamicin (99.1%), meropenem (98.2%), mecillinam (97.3%), tigecycline (97.3%), and imipenem (87.3%). Excluding erythromycin, roughly 55% of isolates were multidrug-resistant. Our results likely reflect the burden of drug-resistant E. coli in the guts of infants in rural Bangladesh and the prevailing drug resistance patterns in this community.