Pathogens in dog bite wounds in dogs in Harare, Zimbabwe

Abstract

Over a year swabs were taken from 87 untreated bite wounds in dogs seen by veterinary practitioners in Harare, Zimbabwe. Swabs were also taken from normal skin adjacent to the wound site, and gingival swabs were collected from normal dogs coming to the same clinics. The swabs were cultured aerobically for pathogens, particularly Staphylococcus intermedius, and the antibiotic sensitivities of the pathogens were determined by disc diffusion assay. The most common pathogens isolated from the wounds were S intermedius (23 per cent), Escherichia coli (18 per cent) and non-lactose-fermenting coliforms (14 per cent). S intermedius was common on the normal skin of the dogs with infected wounds, and was associated with wounds on the abdomen, hindlimbs and tail and wounds that were more than three days old. This organism was, however, isolated only infrequently from the gums and there was little correlation in general between the prevalence of pathogens in the mouth and their prevalence in wounds. Of the S intermedius isolates from wounds, 30 per cent were resistant to penicillin and multiple antibiotic resistance was common among the enterobacterial isolates. The majority of the pathogens were sensitive to cotrimoxazole.

Bacterial Etiology of Skin and Wound Infections along with Antibiogram Profiling in Reference to Emerging Antibiotic Resistance in Animals

“…Microbiological investigation revealed isolation of strains of Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, E.coli, Klebsiella spp., Protius, Bacillus, Clostridium, Streptococcus, Micrococcus and Fusobacterium from different wounds from various species. Our result of bacterial isolation is in support with earlier reports of other workers (Goldstein, 1992;Kelly et al, 1992;Jousmies-Somer et al, 1995;Qureshi et al, 2002;Dierikx et al, 2012;Escobar et al, 2013). In the present study performed over animals for wounds among significant isolates Staphylococcus aureus was the most common isolate (36.22%) followed by E. coli from 34.59 % cases and showed different pattern of sensitivity as evident from the Table 2 and 3.…”

Organ dysfunction and mortality risk factors in severe canine bite wound trauma

“…Investigators commonly report that no single antimicrobial or antimicrobial combination is effective against all species of bacteria cultured from bite wounds . Our study found similar results with a majority of patients initially receiving the empirically chosen combination of ampicillin and enrofloxacin.…”

Comparison of polyhexanide, cold atmospheric plasma and saline in the treatment of canine bite wounds

“…The documented contamination rate of bite wounds lies between 48% and 95.8%, with a wide variety of different bacteria encountered (Kelly et al . , Griffin & Holt , Meyers et al . , Mouro et al .…”

“…In the current study 62.3% of the patients were presented with contaminated wounds and the bacterial species identified generally resembled previously published data (Kelly et al . , Griffin & Holt , Meyers et al . , Mouro et al .…”