Abstract
This short communication addresses the hypothesis that the prevalence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is low in dairy goats in Sweden. Methicillin-resistant S. aureus is a widespread zoonotic bacterium of clinical importance in both animals and humans. In Sweden, MRSA is rare among both animals and humans. However, MRSA has been detected in a few goat herds in Sweden with a high within-herd occurrence of mecC-MRSA, but only a limited number of herds were investigated and most of them were not producing milk for human consumption. The prevalence of MRSA among dairy goat herds in Sweden is not known and a cross-sectional prevalence study was therefore conducted. A total of 22 bulk milk samples from the same number of herds, and pooled swabs from nose, mouth, and perineum from 113 goats, were collected during August and September 2019 for bacteriological investigation. After culturing on selective media, suspected isolates were confirmed as S. aureus using MALDI-TOF and subjected to PCR targeting the mecA and mecC genes to confirm MRSA status. No samples were found to be positive for MRSA, and there are therefore no indications of a spread of MRSA in Swedish dairy goat herds.
Highlights
This short communication addresses the hypothesis that the prevalence of methicillinresistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is low in dairy goats in Sweden
MRSA has previously been detected in goat herds in Sweden, with a high within-herd occurrence of MRSA, but only a few herds were investigated at that time and most of them were not producing milk for human consumption [3]
A recent Austrian study described that 8% of the goats were positive with mecC-MRSA, and with mecC-MRSA only identified in goats of the ruminants sampled in that study [6]
Summary
This short communication addresses the hypothesis that the prevalence of methicillinresistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is low in dairy goats in Sweden. It has been shown to occur among dairy cow herds in Great Britain [8] and a few cow-associated cases of mecC-MRSA have been identified in Sweden [13], but the incidence is much lower compared to that described for goats, wild hedgehogs, and lagomorphs. Twenty-two dairy goat herds from different geographic locations (from the very north to the very south), a sample representative for goat dairy production in Sweden, were included in the study (See Figure 1 for the geographic location of all included farms).
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