Neonatal calf diarrhea (NCD) is a major disease in calves. Escherichia coli is
considered the most common and economically important cause of diarrhea in
young calves.This work is conducted to determine the extended spectrum ßlactamase
(ESBL) producing Escherichia coli (E. coli) isolated from calf diarrhea
and select the most effective antibiotic used to treat this problem. A total of two
hundred fecal samples of diarrheic calves were collected for the presence of ßlactamase
encoding genes (blaTEM, blaSHV, and blaOXA) 84(42%) out of those
samples were E.coli positive.The commonly identified E.coli serogroups were
O26,O111,O128,O91,O114,O103,O17, and O127. Escherichia coli isolates
showed an obstacle of antimicrobial resistance for different antimicrobials while
most of these isolates cleared susceptibility for ciprofloxacin and Ceftriaxone.
Depending on the results of PCR, the Stx1and Stx2 were negative in all the isolates.
Only one isolate O26 carried Stx1 gene and O17 carried Stx2 gene. It was found
that all representative serotypes were negative for eae gene except O111, O26, and
O127.blaTEM, blaSHV were the most predominant genes (100%) but blaOXA
had the lowest prevalence (12.5%). The results proved that multiple antibiotic
resistances are widely spread among isolated strains of E. coli.
Regular screening of antibiotics sensitivity before actual application to animals is
essential to reduce the possibility of dissemination of resistance genes.