Antimicrobial resistance in Enterococcus faecium and Enterococcus faecalis isolates of swine origin from eighteen provinces in China

Enterococcus faecium and E. faecalis are important human pathogens and also served as sentinel organisms for monitoring systems of antimicrobial resistance in both animals and humans. In this study, 106 E. faecium and 56 E. faecalis isolates were collected from 61 pig farms in 18 proveinces of China. Antimicrobial susceptibility was determined for 9 clinically important antibiotics and 3 antimicrobial growth promoters. The Enterococcus isolates showed high prevalence of resistance to medically important antibiotics, such as ampicillin (50.9% for E. faecium and 19.6% for E. faecalis), chloramphenicol (24.5% for E. faecium and 41.1% for E. faecalis), erythromycin (83.0% for E. faecium and 91.1% for E. faecalis), tetracycline (79.2% for E. faecium and 100% for E. faecalis), quinupristin/dalfopristin (26.4% for E. faecium) and ciprofloxacin (73.6% for E. faecium and 66.1% for E. faecalis). Resistance to tigecycline, linezolid and vancomycin was very rare. The resistance status of three representative in-feed antibiotics bacitracin, nosiheptide and enramycin was firstly investigated with Enterococcus as indicator bacteria. The Enterococcus isolates showed extremely high frequency of bacitracin resistance (96.7% for E. faecium and 87.8% for E. faecalis), while no nosiheptide and enramycin resistance was observed. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) analysis showed that a majority of E. faecium and E. faecalis strains showed unrelated profiles, indicating high heterogeneity among the Enterococcus isolates. Our study provided basic data on the antimicrobial resistance of E. faecium and E. faecalis isolates.