Sharmin Islam¹, Rayhan Ahmed², Md. Rowfur Rahman², Md. Mehdi Hasan², Md. Shahidul Islam³, Md. Masudur Rahman Khalil^1,4

¹Center for Communicable Diseases, International Center for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b), Dhaka-1212, Bangladesh
²Department of Microbiology, Gono Bishwabidyalay (University), Dhaka-1344, Bangladesh
³Department of Microbiology, Prime Asia University, Dhaka-1213, Bangladesh
⁴Department of Microbiology and Biotechnology, Jagannath University, Dhaka-1100, Bangladesh

ABSTRACT                                     Full Text (HTML)   (PDF)

Vibrio cholerae are the causative agents of cholera, an acute dehydrating diarrhea. The research report was designed for isolation and identification of Vibrio cholerae from juices. A total of forty samples of different fruit juices such as orange, papaya, grape, malta, sugarcane juice, lemon juice, aloe vera and isupgul juice were collected from different areas of Dhaka city. The total viable count was varying from 7.73 x10⁴-7.62 x10⁸ cfu/ml where the highest count observed in sugarcane juice and lowest count in orange juice. In case of fungal count range was 2.7 x10² – 4.9 x10⁵ cfu/ml. Total coliform count was between 11 – >2400/ 100 ml and E. coli count between <3 – 120/100 ml. Vibrio cholerae was present in 20% of samples where the 75% of Vibrio cholerae were detected from sugarcane juice which was also contaminated with high bacterial and fungal load. The occurrence of drug resistance was also determined in the 8 isolated Vibrio cholerae. All the isolates were resistant to polymixin B, and sensitive to gentamycin and ciprofloxacin. About 40% isolates were resistant to tetracycline and neomycin and 80% isolates were resistant to amikacin. Plasmid profiling of eight isolates also performed, where most of the strain harbor two plasmids. With all the investigation it is bearing on mind that Vibrio cholerae cause severe diarrhoea and occurance of Vibrio cholerae in juice may cause a serious health hazards.

Key words: Plasmid, Vibrio cholera, coliform, E. coli, fruit juice, Bangladesh

Corresponding author. Tel.: +8801710365279
E-mail address: mukta.sharmin@gmail.com (S Islam)