Publications
Factors associated with carriage of multi-resistant commensal Escherichia coli among postmenopausal women in Ujjain, India.
Pathak A, Mahadik K, Sharma R, Marothi Y, Sharma M, Macaden R, Lundborg CS There is paucity of surveillance studies on antibiotic resistance in commensal Escherichia coli. The main aim of this cross-sectional study was to determine factors associated with peri-anal carriage of multi-resistant E. coli by healthy postmenopausal women. A structured questionnaire was completed for consecutive healthy postmenopausal women aged 45 y and above attending the outpatient clinics of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at R.D. Gardi Medical College, Ujjain, India. Antibiotic susceptibility testing was done by the Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion method, as recommended in the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute guidelines. The study showed that 28% of healthy women carried multidrug-resistant (MDR) E. coli in the peri-anal region. The factors significantly associated with carriage of MDR E. coli were family size > 10 (OR 8.23, 95% CI 2.73-24.73; p < 0.001), antibiotic use in the past 2 weeks (OR 5.39, 95% CI 2.36-12.34; p < 0.001), and hospitalization in the past 2 weeks (OR 4.02, 95% CI 1.73-9.31; p = 0.001). This is the first study from India reporting the MDR E. coli carriage rate in healthy women aged over 45 y.
