Virulence gene profiling and antibiotic resistance pattern of Indian isolates of Pasteurella multocida of small ruminant origin

Pasteurellosis in small ruminants affects the livelihood of small and marginal farmers of India. The present study was undertaken to understand the trends in gene carriage and antibiotic resistance pattern of Pasteurella multocida isolates recovered from small ruminants over a period of 10 years in India. A total of 88 P. multocida isolates of small ruminant origin were subjected to virulence gene profiling for 19 genes by PCR and antibiogram study employing 17 different antibiotics. Virulence genes like exbB, exbD, tonB, oma87, sodA, sodC, nanB and plpB (100% prevalence) and ptfA and hsf-2 (>90% prevalence) were found to be uniformly distributed among isolates. Unexpectedly, a very high prevalence (95.45%) of pfhA gene was observed in the present study. Dermonecrotoxin gene (toxA) was observed in 48.9% of isolates with highest occurrence among serotype A isolates and interestingly, one of each isolate of serotype B and F were found to carry this gene. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing revealed 17.04% isolates to be multidrug resistant. Amongst all the antibiotics tested, most of the P. multocida isolates were found to be susceptible to enrofloxacin and chloramphenicol. This study highlights novel epidemiological information on frequency and occurrence of virulence genes among Indian isolates from small ruminants.