Geographic variation of antibiotic resistance in E. coli isolated from drinking water and foodstuffs in Sylhet division of Bangladesh

Geographical variation of antibiotic resistance (ABR) is a great difficulty for the empirical antibiotic's prescription for infectious diseases. The development of ABR in bacteria is believed in associated with some risk factors. In addition, ABR against antibiotic drugs due to its associated risk factors has been linked with various negative health outcomes. However, almost no information is available in relation to such issues of bacteria isolated from environmental samples in Bangladesh. This study first time describes that information's of E. coli isolated from foodstuffs and drinking water in urban and rural areas in Bangladesh. We isolated E. coli from 72 samples (urban 36 and rural 36) from foodstuffs (rice, carrot and tomato) and drinking water (filtered water, tea stall water and tube well water) in Sylhet division, and tested the antibiogram by disc diffusion and spread plate methods against 14 commonly used antibiotics. Sociodemographic data by using a structured questionnaire were collected from 577 participant's child, adolescent and old in urban and rural areas. In this study, we found the occurrence of E. coli isolated from foodstuffs and drinking water is 33.33% and 11.11% in urban and rural areas respectively. This study represents E. coli is resistant (100%) to AMP, AMX, E and P in both the urban and rural areas. However, CTX (83%), C (100%), COT (33%), GEN (83%), DO (17%), AK (83%) and NA (50%) are resistant only in the urban but not rural area. On the other hand, AZM (100%), CIP (100%) and TE (100%) are completely sensitive to E.coli in both the urban and rural areas whereas CTX (100%) is only to rural E.coli. Importantly, multiple antibiotic resistance (MAR) of E.coli is significantly higher in urban than rural samples. Moreover, our data also indicates that ABR associated risk factors link with negative health outcomes in Sylhet division.