Occurrence, Antimicrobial Resistance and Molecular Diversity of Enterococcus faecium in Processed Pork Meat Products in Korea.

Hyun Jung Kim,Minseon Koo

doi:10.3390/foods9091283

Abstract

Because Enterococcus faecium is an important nosocomial pathogen and sentinel organism for tracking antimicrobial resistance, information on the contamination and antimicrobial resistance patterns of E. faecium in food are essential to public health and food safety. We analyzed the occurrence of E. faecium in retail pork meat products (n = 124), and antimicrobial resistance of 30 E. faecium isolates were examined against 14 antimicrobials using the broth dilution test and disc diffusion test. Rep-PCR-based molecular diversity was also analyzed using Deviersilab. The highest contamination of enterococci was observed for minced pork meat but most of the E. faecium was isolated from meatball-type frozen pork meat products (FP). Incidences of antimicrobial-resistant E. faecium against erythromycin, clindamycin and nitrofurantoin were 80%, 50% and 20%, respectively. No vancomycin-resistant enterococci were analyzed. Rep-PCR showed distinctive clusters with a similarity ≥ 98%, consisting of 18 E. faecium isolates from FP manufactured in seven companies. The analyzed data on the contamination and antimicrobial resistance patterns combined with molecular typing can be useful to derive risk management of antimicrobial-resistant enterococci in food.

Highlights

Enterococci are gram-positive, facultative anaerobic bacteria that are frequently detected in the intestinal tracts of animals and humans as a part of the normal microbiota [1]
We only provided the repetitive-sequence-based PCR (rep-PCR)-based molecular typing E. faecium, but additional molecular or phenotypic analysis including Pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), multilocus sequence typing (MLST) and whole genome sequencing (WGS) is recommended to further elucidate the rep-PCR typing result
We found that contamination in the MP is the highest followed by seasoned with redfrozen pepper paste (SRP) and s multiple comparisons test was performed (SSP)

Summary

Introduction

Enterococci are gram-positive, facultative anaerobic bacteria that are frequently detected in the intestinal tracts of animals and humans as a part of the normal microbiota [1]. They are not harmful to humans, but some species of Enterococcus are known as nosocomial agents in hospitalized and immunocompromised patients in hematology, oncology, and transplantation surgery [1]. Antimicrobial resistance is known to contribute to increased morbidity and mortality in infections caused by Enterococcus [3] They can be transmitted person-to-person, and through contaminated environments including foods, causing a variety of infections, such as bacteremia, endocarditis, and urinary tract infections [4,5,6,7].

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Results

Conclusion