Antimicrobial resistance patterns and genotypes of Salmonella enterica serovar Hadar strains associated with human infections in Switzerland, 2005-2010

Abstract

Salmonella Hadar ranks in the top ten serovars reported from humans in Switzerland. In this study, all 64 S. Hadar strains isolated from different patients from 2005 to 2010 in Switzerland were characterized by (i) assessing phenotypic antimicrobial resistance profiles using the disk diffusion method and (ii) by genotyping using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) in order to evaluate the relationship of the strains. The annual incidences varied between 0.32/100,000 in 2005 (highest incidence) and 0.065/100,000 in 2007 (lowest incidence). In total 71.8% of the isolates were resistant to nalidixic acid. Although 40.6% of the strains were resistant to the β-lactam antibiotic ampicillin, they remained susceptible to the third-generation cephalosporin cefotaxime. Genotyping revealed a primary cluster consisting of 42 strains, sharing a similarity of >92%, with a subcluster of 18 strains with indistinguishable patterns. Resistance profiles allowed further differentiation within this subcluster providing a link of two strains to an outbreak in Spain.