Journal of Advances in Medical and Pharmaceutical Sciences

The effectiveness of drugs and chemotherapeutic agents used against bacteria has recently declined due to various mechanisms used by the bacteria to prevent their actions. This study aims at detecting the mechanism of multidrug resistance in bacteria isolated from wound infections in patients attending University of Uyo Teaching hospital. Swabs from infected wounds were collected using aseptic methods. Culture and examination was done using standard microbiological techniques. Sensitivity test was done using disk diffusion technique. Curing was done using acridine orange. Staphylococcus aureus was the predominant species with 43.3% followed by Pseudomonas aeruginosa with 31.67%, Escherichia coli 11.7%, Proteus sp. 8.3% and Klebsiella pneumoniae 5.0%. The overall multidrug resistance was 68.3%. The results of the study further reveal that 61.5% of Staph aureus were resistant to more than eight antibiotics with multiple antibiotic resistance (MAR) index ranging from 0.22-0.89. Other organisms also exhibited various levels of multiple antibiotic resistance indexes. This study shows that the prevalence of multidrug resistant organisms was high and majority of the organism isolated exhibited plasmid mediated resistance. This identification enhances the development of new approaches to overcome the problem of antibiotic resistance as this causes a huge challenge in the treatment of infections within the community where more people get infected each day.