Abstract
The antimicrobial sensitivity, toxin profiles, and agr genotyping of 70 Staphylococcus aureus isolates were determined. The evaluation of 10 antimicrobials showed that 88.5, 52.8, 40, and 25.7% of isolates were resistant to ampicillin, tetracycline, cefoxitin, and oxacillin, respectively. All isolates were sensitive to gentamicin. The prevalence of staphylococcal enterotoxin (SE) genes (sea, seb, sec, sed, see, seg, sei, and seh) and the toxic shock syndrome (tsst-1) gene were estimated by polymerase chain reaction (PCR); 95.7% of S. aureus carried the SE genes. The predominant gene was sed (75.7%), followed by sea and tsst-1 (58.5%), then see and sei (51.4%). The tsst-1 gene was found at a significantly higher rate among food isolates than clinical isolates (P= 0.003). The agr types were identified by multiplex PCR; agr II was more prevalent (58.5%) than agr I (25.7%) and agr III (20%). Key words: Staphylococcus aureus, antibiotic resistance, enterotoxins, agr types.
Highlights
The Gram-positive bacterium Staphylococcus aureus is an opportunistic pathogen that is highly dangerous to human health
Pathogenesis of S. aureus is a multifactorial process that depends on multiple virulence factors' expression, some disease symptoms are particular to specific exotoxins including toxic shock syndrome toxin, enterotoxins (SEs) and exfoliative toxins (ETs) (Dinges et al, 2000)
Resistance profile recorded in our study revealed that multidrug resistance to at least 3 antimicrobials was associated with methicillin resistant S. aureus (MRSA)
Summary
The Gram-positive bacterium Staphylococcus aureus is an opportunistic pathogen that is highly dangerous to human health. It can be identified in the anterior nares and skin of human (Kluytmans et al, 1997) This organism has the ability to cause infection of almost every tissue and organ system in human body, doing so by exporting a large array of virulence factors (surface proteins, enzymes and toxins) to the cell surface and extracellular environment of the human host (Vandecasteele et al, 2009). SEs are considered the major cause of food poisoning, because they are resistant to heat and to proteolytic enzymes like trypsin, pepsin and renin; so, pass both cooking process and move through the gastrointestinal tract without losing their activity They cause systemic effects such as high fever, abdominal cramps, vomiting, and diarrhea (Fernandez et al, 2006). Infected individual recovers within one to two days, but some cases require hospitalization
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