SUMMARY
Escherichia coli is one of the most common bacteria that populates the natural flora of the gastrointestinal tract. Antimicrobial abuse and chaotic administration is a common fact in poultry production leading to the emergence, selection and spreading of drug resistant E.coli in both veterinary and human medicine. This research was conducted on a number of 41 E.coli isolates from poultry meat (n=28) and feacal material from humans (n=12). The resistance genes of the main classes of antibiotics (TetA, TetB, dfrAI, sulI, TEM) were evaluated through PCR multiplex. It was revealed a high prevalence of the multi-resistant strains in E.coli strains isolated from poultry meat. None of the strains isolated proved positive for stx1, stx2, genes that are characteristic for Shiga toxigenic E.coli which causes infections in humans. Still, the PCRs revealed that tetA and tetB (tetracycline resistance genes) were the most prevalent genes (64.5%) found in poultry isolates while in human cases (60.8%, dfrA17 (52.4%) (trimethoprim resistance genes) and sulI (41.3) (sulfonamide resistance genes) proved the most frequent. Even though the resistance patterns in the E.coli strains isolated from poultry meat and the ones isolated from humans are not similar, still there is a high prevalence of human contamination with resistant E.coli by poultry meat consumption. The resistance genes studied have been isolated in a higher percent than in other studies made in European countries, which leads us to the conclusion that E.coli in this region is highly mutagenic and can be consider a reservoir of resistance genes.