Identification and antibiotic susceptibility of bacterial isolates from probiotic products

In the present study, a total of 55 European probiotic products were evaluated with regard to the identity and the antibiotic resistance of the bacterial isolates recovered from these products. Bacterial isolation from 30 dried food supplements and 25 dairy products, yielded a total of 268 bacterial isolates selected from several selective media. Counts of food supplements showed bacterial recovery in 19 (63%) of the dried food supplements ranging from 103 to 106 CFU/g, whereas all dairy products yielded growth in the range of 105–109 CFU/ml. After identification of the isolates using whole-cell protein profiling, mislabeling was noted in 47% of the food supplements and 40% of the dairy products. In six food supplements, Enterococcus faecium was isolated whereas only two of those products claim this species on their label. Using the disc diffusion method, antibiotic resistance among 187 isolates was detected against kanamycin (79% of the isolates), vancomycin (65%), tetracycline (26%), penicillinG (23%), erythromycin (16%) and chloramphenicol (11%). Overall, 68.4% of the isolates showed resistance against multiple antibiotics including intrinsic resistances. Initially, 38% of the isolated enterococci was classified as vancomycin resistant using the disc diffusion method, whereas additional broth dilution and PCR assays clearly showed that all E. faecium isolates were in fact vancomycin susceptible.