Multiple Drug Resistant Isolates of Vibrio Carrying the Transferable R Plasmid from Shrimp Farms in Thailand

Abstract

One thousand forty-nine bacterial isolates, which were collected from shrimp farms in Thailand, were resistant to antimicrobial agents: ampicillin (ABPC), chloramphenicol (CP), kanamycin (KM), oxolinic acid (OA), streptomycin (SM) and tetracycline (TC). One hundred forty-two isolates were identified as Vibrio. These isolates were conjugated with Escherichia coli for detection of transferable R plasmid. Six patterns of transferable R plasmids, which encoded resistance to the combinations of one to five drugs (ABPC, CP, SM, sulfamonomethoxine, TC and trimethoprim), were found from 16 drug-resistant isolates of Vibrio. This is the first report of transferable R plasmids from Vibrio spp. in shrimp farms in Thailand.