Abstract
Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) is an important pathogen characterized by its potential to express wide varieties of extra-cellular proteins. Enterotoxins are the most notable extra-cellular proteins which cause toxic shock-like syndromes and have been implicated in a number of acute food poisoning outbreaks worldwide. Not all Staphylococci produce toxins, the rate at which they are produced is not known. This study used multiplex PCR to analyze the distributions of enterotoxin genes in S. aureus isolates obtained from humans and hospital environments in Osun State, Nigeria. Staphylococcus aureus were confirmed using nucA gene and multiplex PCR was used to detect the presence of enterotoxin genes (sea, seb, sec, sed, see and sef). Four out of six monitored enterotoxins genes tested for, were detected and twenty-eight (63.6%) out of 44 isolates tested were positive for at least one of the enterotoxin genes. The seb gene was the most frequent, which was detected in 41.0% of isolates, followed by sec with 30.8%, see (20.5%) and the least occurring gene is the sed . Enterotoxins coding for sea and sef were not detected in any of the isolates. There were some isolates with multiple enterotoxin genes; two enterotoxins’ genes were detected in 15.9% of the isolates while 4.5% in three enterotoxins’ genes. The high occurrence of enterotoxin genes in S. aureus isolates from hospital’s environment is of importance, since the contamination and transmission of the enterotoxigenic strains of S. aureus by hospital’s staff and their patients cannot be rule out.
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