Prevalence and Antimicrobial Susceptibility of Isolated from Short Mackerels () in Malaysia.

Numerous prevalence studies and outbreaks of infection have been extensively reported in shellfish and crustaceans. Information on the quantitative detection of in finfish species is limited. In this study, short mackerels () obtained from different retail marketplaces were monitored with the presence of total and pathogenic strains of . Out of 130 short mackerel samples, 116 (89.2%) were detected with the presence of total and microbial loads of total ranging from <3 to >10 MPN/g. Prevalence of total was found highest in wet markets (95.2%) followed by minimarkets (89.1%) and hypermarkets (83.3%). Pathogenic strains (+ and/or +) were detected in 16.2% (21 of 130) of short mackerel samples. The density of + strains were examined ranging from 3.6 to >10 MPN/g and microbial loads of strains positive for both and were found ranging from 300 to 740 MPN/g. On the other hand, antibiotic susceptibility profiles of strains isolated from short mackerels were determined through disc diffusion method in this study. Assessment of antimicrobial susceptibility profile of revealed majority of the isolates were highly susceptible to ampicillin sulbactam, meropenem, ceftazidime, and imipenem, but resistant to penicillin G and ampicillin. Two isolates (2.99%) exhibited the highest multiple antibiotic resistance (MAR) index value of 0.41 which shown resistance to 7 antibiotics. Results of the present study demonstrated that the occurrence of pathogenic strains in short mackerels and multidrug resistance of isolates could be a potential public health concerns to the consumer. Furthermore, prevalence data attained from the current study can be further used to develop a microbial risk assessment model to estimate health risks associated with the consumption of short mackerels contaminated with pathogenic .