Abstract
Bacillus subtilis are opportunistic, spore forming bacteria, common soil inhabitants, and may frequently contaminate foods and widely distributed in hospital environments. This paper purposes to find out the incidence of Bacillus subtilis from various sources and locations at Azadi Teaching Hospital in Duhok city, Iraq. The susceptibility test and resistotyping (antibiotypes) profile of isolates were also studied. Samples, using sterile cotton swabs, were collected from various sources and locations and plated on Blood agar, chocolate agar and MacConkey agar. The recovered isolates were identified by routine procedures. Antibiotics susceptibility and resistant profiles to eight selected antibiotics were performed by the disc diffusion method using Mueller-Hinton agar. Out of the 128 samples collected 84 samples were yielded bacterial growth, of them 31(24.2%) were Bacillus subtilis. Moreover; other bacterial groups were isolated and identified. The susceptibility test of Bacillus subtilis isolates; the organism exhibited high susceptibility to gentamicin (96.7%) and ciprofloxacin (93.5%), while cephalexin (25.8%), cefotaxime (19.3%) and ampicillin (16.2%) demonstrated the lowest susceptibility rate. Resistotyping (antibiotypes) profiles for the isolates of Bacillus subtilis were determined. Out of 31 isolates, 22 of them were multiple resistant and belonged to 3 resistotype patterns; resistotype 1 was predominant among isolates. This study shows that there is an increased rate of incidence of Bacillus subtilis in hospital environments and some of these isolates were multi-drug resistant and showed different resistotyping profiles