Minimum Inhibitory Concentration of Augmentin on Nasal Staphylococcus aureus Isolates Among Undergraduate Students

Although Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) can be a human commensal, it is a cause of bacterial infections and carries mortality rate of over 30% despite the advancement in the 21 st century therapeutics. This is in addition to the growing prevalence of drug resistance that has made treatment with antibiotic to become more problematic. To fight this growing problem of antibiotic, antibiotics combination therapy was adopted as a strategies and this lead to several combination therapy. This study therefore investigates the Minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of an antibiotics combination therapy such as Augmentin on nasal S. aureus isolates. Of interest however is Augmentin; an oral antibacterial combination consisting of amoxicillin and clavulanate potassium. The study was conducted among apparently healthy undergraduate students of Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma. Following standard laboratory procedures, biochemical characterization and Augmentin antibiotic susceptibility testing were carried out on 12 samples of S. aureus isolates. The results showed that nasal S. aureus isolates were positive to coagulase, mannitol, sucrose and catalase but negative to indole, urease and oxidase tests. Overall, all the isolates were susceptible to varying concentrations of Augmentin antibiotic with the minimum MIC and maximum MIC observed at 0.05μg/ml and 12.5μg/ml respectively. The mean MIC of Augmentin antibiotic was 5.16±5.69μg/ml. There was a statistical significant different in the MIC between the 12 samples. The wide variation in the minimum and maximum MICs (12.45μg/ml) with Augmentin antibiotic suggests a wide variation in dosage of Augmentin antibiotic capable of inhibiting the growth of microorganism such as S.aureus after overnight incubation.