Tenth International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

The common houseflies (Musca domestica) are known vectors capable of transmitting microorganisms from food to animals and humans. At present, studies have focused simply on pathogen detection rather than frequency and few have described antibiogram patterns and multidrug resistance (MDR). This study sets out to address these issues by analyzing flies from various sources using standard microbiological techniques. Isolated microorganisms were identified using 16SrRNA sequencing and typed using Enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus polymerase chain reaction (ERIC-PCR). Of the 129 bacteria isolated from 72 flies, Salmonella sp. was the most commonly occurring and together with Escherichia coli, Proteus sp. and Klebsiella sp. made up 81.4% of total bacteria. Most isolates were resistant to amoxicillin (82.9%) and co-trimoxazole (81.4%), while the least resistance was against ciprofloxacin (6.2%). In total, 58 different antibiograms were detected, though nearly 50% of these (29/59) were observed in only a single isolate. This study noted a high degree of MDR (74.4%) among bacterial isolates. In addition to the ability of houseflies to serve as reservoirs for possible bacteria pathogens, this study clearly describes its ability to serve as reservoirs for MDR also. The diversity of bacteria identified points at a possible major public health issue due to the potential difficulty in controlling the acquisition of bacteria by flies. Control efforts might, therefore, need to be more suited to reducing access of these flies to human food and water.