Current status of resistance to antibiotics in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: A review

A review of literature was conducted to assess the prevalence and mechanisms of antibiotic resistance to date, mainly to beta-lactam antibiotics, cephalosporins, carbapenems, colistin, and tigecycline in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). English and French publications were listed and analysed using PubMed/Medline, Google Scholar, and African Journals database between 1 January 1990 and 31 December 2019. For the 30 published articles found: (1) bacterial resistance to antibiotics concerned both Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria; (2) multidrug resistance prevalence was the same in half of Streptococcus pneumoniae isolates; (3) a worrying prevalence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) was noted, which is associated with co-resistance to several other antibiotics; and (4) resistance to third-generation cephalosporins was very high in Enterobacteriaceae, mainly because of bla(CTX-M-1) group and bla(SHV) genes. Data on carbapenem and colistin resistance were not available in DRC until recently. Further work is required to set up a surveillance system for antibiotic resistance in DRC. (C) 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of International Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy.