Poster Presentation The 3rd Prato Conference on the Pathogenesis of Bacterial Diseases of Animals 2014

Differences in the antimicrobial susceptibility profile of Moraxella bovis, M. bovoculi and M. ovis (#29)

Grazieli Maboni 1 , Leticia T. Gressler 1 , Julia P. Espindola 1 , Marcelo Schwab 1 , Caiane Tasca 1 , Agueda C. Vargas 1
  1. Moredun Research Institute, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Infectious keratoconjunctivitis (IK) affects cattle and sheep and is characterized by conjunctivitis and corneal ulcers. Moraxella bovis, Moraxella ovis and Moraxella bovoculi can be involved in IK lesions in ovine and bovine. Antibiotics are widely used in the treatment of this disease; hence, susceptibility tests are essential for selecting effective drugs. Disk diffusion tests are routinely used to determine the susceptibility of Moraxella spp.; in contrast, broth microdilution (reference method) is more often used in epidemiological studies. The aim of this research was to evaluate the agreement between disk diffusion and the broth microdilution method, as well as to determine the antimicrobial susceptibility profile of M. bovis, M. bovoculi and M. ovis. Broth microdilution and disk diffusion tests were used to evaluate the susceptibility of M. bovis, M. bovoculi and M. ovis (n=32) for ampicillin, cefoperazone, ceftiofur, cloxacillin, enrofloxacin, florfenicol, gentamicin, neomycin, oxytetracycline and penicillin. The main results were that broth microdilution and disc diffusion were concordant for determining the susceptibility of Moraxella spp. for most of the antimicrobials tested, suggesting that a simple and inexpensive method (disk diffusion) was effective for determining the susceptibility of Moraxella spp.; additionally, Moraxella spp. strains were sensitive for most of the antimicrobials tested. Differences between the antimicrobial susceptibility profiles between the three species of Moraxella were found, since M. bovis differed from other species, showing higher inhibitory and bactericidal concentration values and lower agreement between the results of the two susceptibility tests analysed. Further studies are necessary to determine the reason that higher concentrations of antimicrobials are required to achieve inhibition of M. bovis. According to the interpretative criteria used, the three Moraxella species showed the best susceptibility profile for ampicillin, ceftiofur, enrofloxacina, florfenicol and gentamicin.