Abstract

Due to reported cases of antimicrobial resistance by many pathogenic bacteria against many antibiotics worldwide, and the sparse nature of antimicrobial resistance data, a retrospective study was carried out on 744 isolates of Salmonella typhi obtained from 974 samples from four different hospitals in Yola, Adamawa State, Nigeria between 2001-2004 to determine the resistance pattern of S. typhi to the most commonly used antibiotics cotrimoxazole, ciprofloxacin, chloramphenicol and ampicillin. High rates of resistance was found in most of the isolates studied. Resistance rates were 92.3, 88.8, 79.6, 53.5 and 20% to amoxicillin, ampicillin, chloramphenicol, cotrimoxazole and ciprofloxacin, respectively. The high percentage resistance to the antibiotics studied could be attributed to their prevailing usage and abuse in the area under study. The implication of the high percentage resistance recorded for the antibiotics is that only ciprofloxacin will effectively treat S. typhi infections. These results call for nationwide surveillance programme to monitor microbial trends and antimicrobial resistance patterns in Nigeria.

Key words: Antibiotics, resistance, surveillance, Nigeria, Salmonella typhi.