ABSTRACT
Australia has high and increasing rates of salmonellosis. To date, the serovar distribution and associated antimicrobial resistance (AMR) patterns of nontyphoidal Salmonella enterica (NTS) in Australia have not been assessed. Such information provides critical knowledge about AMR in the food chain and informs decisions about public health. We reviewed longitudinal data on NTS in two Australian states over a 37-year period, between 1979 and 2015, and antimicrobial resistance since 1984. Overall, 17% of isolates were nonsusceptible to at least one antimicrobial, 4.9% were nonsusceptible to ciprofloxacin, and 0.6% were nonsusceptible to cefotaxime. In total, 2.5% of isolates were from invasive infections, with no significant difference in AMR profiles between invasive and noninvasive isolates. Most isolates with clinically relevant AMR profiles were associated with travel, particularly to Southeast Asia, with multiple “incursions” of virulent and resistant clones into Australia. Our findings represent the largest longitudinal surveillance system for NTS in Australia and provide valuable public health knowledge on the trends and distribution of AMR in NTS. Ongoing surveillance is critical to identify local emergence of resistant isolates.
FOOTNOTES
- Received 28 September 2017.
- Returned for modification 17 October 2017.
- Accepted 13 November 2017.
- Accepted manuscript posted online 27 November 2017.
Supplemental material for this article may be found at https://doi.org/10.1128/AAC.02012-17.
- Copyright © 2018 Williamson et al.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
