Investigation of antibiotic resistance genes in certain Egyptian hospitals : Apilot study towards establishing the Egyptian hospital resistome / Soha Gamal Eldin Mohamad ; Supervised Magdy Ali Amin , Ramy Karam Aziz , Marwa Tarek Elrakaiby

Thesis (M.Sc.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Pharmacy - Department of Microbiology and Immunology

Nosocomial infections remain a serious threat to human life, which represents 7% in developed countries and 10% in developing countries. In fact,they have become a top public health issue and approximately 15% of patients under medical caresuffer fromthese types of infections, according to the world health organization (WHO).This problem was described as 2a silent tsunami, crumbling down the pillars upon which modern medicine is built3. It was estimated that around 700,000 worldwide annual death caused by antibiotic resistant bacteria. By 2050, it is predicted to increase to 10 million, if no action is taken to face and eradicate these resistant bacteria. As the latest advances in sequencing technologies have allowed the unbiased identification of bacterial communities,we aimed to implement emerging omics technologies to characterize a hospital{u2019}s microbiome at thecenter of Cairo, Egypt. To this end, we screened surfaces and inanimate objects in the hospital, focusing on bedsheets and doorknobs, with additional screening for resistant microbes and resistance genes. While bacterialload and community composition were not dramatically different between doorknobs of hospital units withdifferent hygiene levels, the bacterial communities on doorknob samples were richer and more diverse thanthose detected on bed sheets.Bacteria detected on doorknobs were a mixture of those associated with dust/particulate matter/debris (e.g., Bacillus, Geobacillus, Aeribacillus) and skin-associated bacteria (e.g., Staphylococcus,Corynebacterium). The latter were among the core genera shared by all analyzed samples. Conversely,bacteria that were more abundant in bed sheets were not associated with a particular source (e.g.,Pseudomonas and Nitrobacter)

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