Many Gram negative bacteria, especially Aeromonas hydrophila are notorious for their heightened capacity to acquire and exchange antibiotic resistance genes and consequently, are commonly targeted as indicator organism for monitoring antimicrobial resistance in aquatic milieus. This study was aimed to investigate the prevalence and drug resistance patterns of Aeromonas hydrophila isolated from farm raised catfish at Epe fish farm, Lagos State, Nigeria. Swabs were aseptically taken from the kidney, intestine, liver, gills, and skin after dissecting the fish samples. The specimens were bacteriologically analyzed. After series of biochemical test, the isolated bacteria were identified presumptively according to Bergey’s Manual of determinative bacteriology, 7th Edition. Fifty-seven (57) Aeromonas hydrophila were recovered out of seventy-one (71) bacterial isolated from the 35 fish samples collected from the fish farms studied. The study reveals multiple antibiotics resistance pattern among the isolates as Aeromonas hydrophila were 100% resistant to Streptomycin, Oxytetracycline, Chloranphenicol, Pefloxacin, Ofloxacin and 70, 65 and 55% resistant to Gentamycin, Amoxycillin and Erythromycin respectively. However, all the isolates were 100% susceptible to Ciprofloxacin and Cotrimoxazole only. The presence of multidrug-resistant Aeromonas hydrophila in fish could be a vehicle of horizontal gene transfer to previously susceptible bacteria and these could constitute a serious public health hazard to human and animal in the environment. Thus, the use of antibiotics in catfish production as growth promoter or disease prevention should be discouraged and some safer, biological alternatives strategies should suffice to mitigate bacteria drug resistance and its associated problems.

Keywords: Aeromonas hydrophila, Antibiotics Resistance, Aquaculture, Catfish, Pathogens.

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