Abstract
BACKGROUND: The global spread of antimicrobial resistance is one of the defining challenges of our time. Preserving the efficacy of antibiotics is a shared responsibility, which includes conducting regular surveillance studies. The poultry industry, which produces the highest quantity of animal-derived protein in the shortest time, faces significant challenges from Escherichia coli, a bacterium frequently responsible for clinical disease. METHODS: This study aimed to assess the susceptibility of E. coli isolates collected from clinical cases in turkeys across Hungary to antibiotics of veterinary and public health importance using minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) determination. RESULTS: Over the course of one year, we analyzed a total of 70 clinical isolates. Most isolates (64.3%) were resistant to amoxicillin, and the observed 25.7% resistance to amoxicillin-clavulanic acid suggests that the majority of strains are beta-lactamase producers. The highest resistance level was observed against neomycin (74.3%). Resistance to critically important antibiotics, including enrofloxacin (28.6%), ceftriaxone (8.6%), and colistin (7.1%) raises significant public health concerns. When comparing our results with human hospital resistance data from Hungary, most findings showed comparable values, with the exception of neomycin, which exhibited markedly higher resistance in the isolates from poultry. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings underscore the necessity of regular surveillance studies, which should be periodically repeated in the future to observe temporal trends. These results should also be linked to antibiotic usage patterns, and the genetic background of multidrug-resistant strains should be further examined using next-generation sequencing techniques. This study provides critical insights into the current antimicrobial resistance landscape in the Hungarian poultry industry and highlights the urgent need for targeted interventions to prevent the dissemination of resistant strains to humans. The findings contribute valuable data for developing future AMR management strategies in veterinary and public health contexts.