Abstract
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) have been a major public health concern in humans. Among MRSA, livestock-associated (LA)-MRSA strains have always been associated with exposure to livestock or their products and have emerged in different countries globally. Although studies have identified LA-MRSA from healthy pigs and pork in Thailand, prevalence in slaughtered pigs is still unknown. In addition, there are few reports on the epidemiology and molecular characteristics of LA-MRSA in Thailand. Hence, this is the first report investigating the epidemiology and molecular characteristics of MRSA in individual slaughtered pigs and pork in Thailand. A total of 204 nasal swab and 116 retailed pork samples were collected from three slaughterhouses and four fresh markets, respectively. Individual samples were used for screening for MRSA and obtained isolates were examined for drug- resistance profiling for 12 antimicrobial agents of 10 drug classes. In addition, SCCmec typing and multi-locus sequence typing were conducted to obtain genotype profiles. MRSA were isolated from 11 and 52 nasal swab and pork samples, respectively. The prevalence was significantly higher in the pork than in the nasal swab samples (p-value < 0.05). A high prevalence of ST9-SCCmecIX and ST398-SCCmecV with high-level antimicrobial resistance from markets and slaughterhouses indicated the spreading of MRSA with these genotypes in the Thai swine processing chains and suggested the need for further investigation to determine a control.
Highlights
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has been a major public health concern as it causes nosocomial infections leading to high mortality and morbidity in humans [1]
The most prominent livestockassociated MRSA (LA-MRSA) strain in Europe and America belongs to sequence type 398 (ST398) whereas that in most Asia countries belongs to ST9 [9,10,11,12,13]
Among 204 nasal swab samples of pigs from three slaughterhouses and 116 pork samples from four markets, 63 (19.7%) were positive for MRSA based on the presence of the mecA (Table 1)
Summary
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has been a major public health concern as it causes nosocomial infections leading to high mortality and morbidity in humans [1]. MRSA strains with resistance to a wide range of antibiotics have been found in various sources globally [2,3,4] and are classified into three broad groups, namely, healthcareassociated MRSA (HA-MRSA), community-associated MRSA (CA-MRSA), and livestockassociated MRSA (LA-MRSA) based on the source of infection [5]. CA-MRSA has been increasingly reported in communities among people without prior history of risk factors to MRSA infections [6]. LA-MRSA strains have always been associated with exposure to livestock or their products and have emerged in different countries in Europe, America, and Asia [7,8]. The most prominent LA-MRSA strain in Europe and America belongs to sequence type 398 (ST398) whereas that in most Asia countries belongs to ST9 [9,10,11,12,13]. LA-MRSA belonging to ST398 has been reported to colonize livestock and people with close contact to them such as farmers and veterinarians [14,15,16]
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