Magnitude of antibiotic resistant bacterial colonization of women attending HIV clinic in Lagos, Nigeria

Opportunistic infections due microorganisms particularly bacteria have posed a threat and thus an addition burden on the management of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections worldwide. The high prevalence of bacterial pathogens and the emergence of multiple drug resistance among such bacteria call for serious concern. Bacteriological examination of 320 women attending HIV clinics was carried out using standard microbiological techniques. The antimicrobial susceptibility testing was carried out by the disc diffusion technique by Bauer and CLSI. Of the 320 women, 200 (62.5%) had bacteria, 120 women were confirmed as HIV positive. Ninety (75%) of these women had both HIV-1 and HIV-2, twenty (16.7%) had only HIV-1 and 10 (8.3%) had only HIV-2. Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli were the predominant bacteria. Antibiogram of the bacterial isolates determined by using the Kirby Bauer disk diffusion showed that most of them were susceptible to augmentin, gentamicin, peflacin, ciprofloxacin, ofloxacin and amoxicillin but were highly resistant to commonly used, over-the-counter drugs like chloramphenicol, tetracycline and streptomycin. This thus poses additional burden on the healthcare system in its attempt to manage HIV using anti-retroviral drugs among other methods, along with immunity enhancing drugs while the search for HIV vaccines still continues.