Incidence of Klebsiella pneumonia in street foods sold in Malaysia and their characterization by antibiotic resistance, plasmid profiling, and RAPD-PCR analysis

A total of 78 samples of street foods from different states in Malaysia were examined for the presence of Klebsiella pneumonia. K pneumonia contamination was recorded in 32% of the samples examined. The frequency of the K pneumonia isolates containing plasmids was shown to be 48%. Susceptibility testing showed that all isolates were highly resistant to ampicillin (100%), erythromycin (100%), rifampicin (100%), streptomycin (96%) and sulfamethoxazole (80%), but susceptible to chloramphenicol. RAPID proved to be the most effective technique in discriminating the K pneumonia isolates since dendrogram constructed using the combination of 4 primers could differentiate 25 isolates of K. pneumonia to 25 strains. This is the first report that revealed the occurrence of K. pneumonia in street foods sold in Malaysia. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.