Antibiotic resistance patterns in human, animal, food and environmental isolates in Ghana: a review

IINTRODUCTION: many articles have been published on resistant microorganisms isolated from humans, animals, foods and the environment in Ghana. However, there has not been any review of all information on the isolates from these sources and the antibiotics used to test for resistance. METHODS: this literature review was completed through "PubMed" and "Google Scholar" searches. We included publications from the period 1975-2015 with a laboratory-based methodology to determine antibiotic resistance of strains isolated in Ghana. RESULTS: in total, 60 articles were included in the analysis with 10% of the articles carrying out nationwide research on antibiotic resistance. The regions with the highest published articles of Ghana were Greater Accra (40%), Ashanti (21.7%) and Northern Region (10%). Most of the studies (86.7%) were related to isolates collected from human samples followed by environmental (5%), animal (3%) and food samples (2%). Ten different bacteria genera were observed in the studies. The most common was Escherichia coli, followed by Staphylococcus spp., Mycobacterium spp. and Streptococcus spp. The highest mean resistance rate was encountered in Escherichia coli(62.2%) followed by Klebsiella spp. (60.4%) and Pseudomonas spp. (52.1%). CONCLUSION: high resistance rates have been found in Ghana, however, the data are skewed and some regions of the country have been neglected. There is a need for higher quality research to establish and monitor resistance patterns in Upper West, Brong-Ahafo, Volta and Eastern Regions of Ghana.