Abstract
Antimicrobial resistance has been increasing globally, which negatively affects food safety, veterinary, and human medicine. Ineffective antibiotics may cause treatment failure, which results in prolonged hospitalisation, increased mortality, and consequently, increased health care costs. Staphylococcus aureus causes a diverse range of infections including septicaemia and endocarditis. However, in food, it mainly causes food poisoning by the production of enterotoxins. With the discovery of methicillin-resistant S. aureus strains that have a separate reservoir in livestock animals, which were termed as livestock-associated methicillin-resistant S. aureus (LA-MRSA) in 2005, it became clear that animals may pose another health risk. Though LA-MRSA is mainly transferred by direct contact, food transmission cannot be excluded. While the current strains are not very pathogenic, mitigation is advisable, as they may acquire new virulence genes, becoming more pathogenic, and may transfer their resistance genes. Control of LA-MRSA poses significant problems, and only Norway has an active mitigation strategy. There is limited information about LA-MRSA, MRSA in general, and other S. aureus infections from African countries. In this review, we discuss the prevalence and characteristics of antimicrobial susceptible and resistant S. aureus (with a focus on MRSA) from meat and meat products in African countries and compare it to the situation in the rest of the world.
Highlights
The increase in antimicrobial-resistant zoonotic bacterial pathogens has become a significant public health challenge
Only two studies were conducted on the prevalence of S. aureus in sheep meat. Both were conducted in South Africa, and the results showed major differences [25,26]
Prevalence in beef was 6.12%, which was higher than 4%, 0.8%, and 1.7% found in beef meat from the USA [36,38,49] and 4.4% found in Hong Kong [91], while in Brazil, a very high prevalence (23.3%) was found [45]
Summary
The increase in antimicrobial-resistant zoonotic bacterial pathogens has become a significant public health challenge. Compared to data from other countries, the results are similar [36,37,38,39], though in China, a higher percentage of contamination was found, with a little over 50% of the raw beef samples found positive [40], as well as in a specific study from the US where a prevalence of 65.6% was found in retail beef [14], while in another US study, the overall positivity S. aureus was 16.4% [41] This large variation in both Africa and worldwide may be attributed to several factors, including sampling method, isolation methods, sampling site on the carcass, different cuts of meat, contamination during and after the slaughter, storage of the meat, as well as the processing of the meat [42]. Two studies reported the resistance genes present in S. aureus (MSSA) from meat products in Africa (Table 6). The presence of MSSA ST398, ST8, and ST22 indicates that they might be more associated with humans contaminating the meat, either during slaughter, processing, or storage
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