The current research was done to verify the prevalence, the antimicrobial resistant strains and virulence profiles of Escherichia coli in sheep of western China. In total 167 lambs diarrhea samples were collected from Gansu and Qinghai province, China, during 2014-2017. A total of 103 E. coli isolates were subjected to verify their antimicrobial susceptibility and virulence genes. The data showed that the percentage of E. coli isolates was 61.68%. The main resistances were obtained for penicillin (97.09%), lincomycin (95.15%) and erythromycin (69.90%). The most common antimicrobial resistance gene was tetA (83.50%), tetB (68.93%), blaTEM (63.11%), blaSHV (56.31%) and aac (3)-I (78.64%). Overall, the frequently virulence genes were mdh, ipaH, eae and stx1. The most frequent combined virulence patterns were ipaH-eae (38.83%), ipaH-stx1 (37.86%), eae-stx1 (33.98%), ipaH-astA (23.30%), astA-eae (21.36%) and ipaH-eae-stx1 (26.21%). These results demonstrated pathogenic E. coli are widely distributed in sheep of western China and carrying various antimicrobial resistance genes and virulence genes.

To Cite This Article: Tuo X, Wang S, Cui D, Wang F, Wang H, Liu Y and Wang H, 2020. Antibiotic resistance profiles and virulence markers of escherichia coli strains isolated from diarrheal lambs in Gansu and Qinghai, China. Pak Vet J, 40(1): 123-126. http://dx.doi.org/10.29261/pakvetj/2019.102