Introduction: shigellosis is a significant global human health problem, and shigella is in charge of almost 165 million cases of this disease annually, of whom 163 million cases are in developing countries. the main aims of the current study were to identify shigella spp. isolated from diarrheal patients and determination its antimicrobial susceptibility.
Methods: the bacterial isolated were identified as shigella spp. by microbiological tests and were serotype by the slide agglutination test. antimicrobial susceptibility testing was performed using the disk diffusion method. PCR was performed to detect the ipaH gene.
Results: the shigella strains were isolated from 250 patients with various diarrhea, including bloody diarrhea (5%), mucoid plus bloody diarrhea (2%), mucoid diarrhea (4%), and watery diarrhea (3%). overall, 88 (35.2%) isolated were positive for shigella spp., of which 39 (44.31%) serotypes were identified as shigella flexeneri, 26 (29.54%) serotypes were identified as shigella sonnei, 15 (17.04%) serotypes were identified as shigella dysenteriae, and 8 (9.09%) serotypes were identified as shigella boydii. antibiotic susceptibility test revealed that the highest resistance percentage was related to trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (68%), and ciprofloxacin and cefixime were the best antibiotics against shigella isolates.
Conclusion: we concluded that shigella spp. can be considered as an etiology agent of diarrhea in Southwest Iran. since the drug resistance pattern of Shigella differs geographically and over time within a country, continuous and regular surveillance program is necessary.