Changing trends of culture-positive typhoid fever and antimicrobial susceptibility in a tertiary care North Indian Hospital over the last decade.

Purpose: The present study was undertaken to analyse the trend in prevalence of culture-positive typhoid fever during the last decade and to determine antimicrobial susceptibility profile of Salmonella Typhi and Salmonella Paratyphi A isolated from patients of enteric fever presenting to our hospital.

Methods: All the culture-positive enteric fever cases during 2005-2016 presenting to our Hospital were included in the study. Antimicrobial susceptibility was done against chloramphenicol, amoxicillin, co-trimoxazole, ciprofloxacin, ofloxacin, levofloxacin, pefloxacin, ceftriaxone and azithromycin as per corresponding CLSI guidelines for each year. We also analysed the proportion of culture positivity during 1993-2016 in light of the antibiotic consumption data from published literature.

Results: A total of 1066 strains-S. Typhi (772) and S. Paratyphi A (294) were isolated from the blood cultures during the study. A maximum number of cases were found in July-September. Antimicrobial susceptibility for chloramphenicol, amoxicillin and co-trimoxazole was found to be 87.9%, 75.5%, 87.3% for S. Typhi and 94.2%, 90.1% and 94.2% for S. Paratyphi A, respectively. Ciprofloxacin, ofloxacin and levofloxacin susceptibility were 71.3%, 70.8% and 70.9% for S. Typhi and 58.1%, 57.4% and 57.1% for S. Paratyphi A, respectively. Azithromycin susceptibility was 98.9% in S. Typhi. Although susceptibility to ceftriaxone and cefixime was 100% in our isolates, there is a continuous increase in ceftriaxone minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC)and MICvalues over the time. The proportion of blood culture-positive cases during 1993-2016 ranged from a minimum of 0.0006 in 2014 to a maximum of 0.0087 in 1999.

Conclusion: We found that the most common etiological agent of enteric fever is S. Typhi causing the majority of cases from July to October in our region. MIC to ceftriaxone in typhoidal salmonellae is creeping towards resistance and more data are needed to understand the azithromycin susceptibility.