Abstract
Staphylococcus aureus represents a public health challenge all over the world. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the prevalence of five genes (sea, seb, sec, see and seg) encoding the staphylococcal enterotoxins in S. aureus isolated from different sources and to evaluate the association of these toxins in comparison to susceptibility towards 12 antimicrobials; antimicrobial susceptibility was conducted by disc diffusion method. Detection of staphylococcal enterotoxins was performed by PCR and the ability to express these genes was assessed among isolates by RT-PCR. The most common enterotoxin gene was sea gene (66%), followed by seb, sec, see and seg (38%, 23%, 19% and 5%) respectively. Expression of sea, seb and seg genes was variable. However, sec and see genes were not expressed by any of the tested isolates. No statistically significant association exists between (seb, sec and see) and isolation sources, while the sea was significantly associated with clinical isolates. High significant correlation was found between elevated sea expression and multidrug-resistance. Our findings indicate that the pathogenic potential of S. aureus may be greater than previously thought. This emphasizes the utmost need to implement proactive measures and more emphasis will be placed on the application of hygiene practices in hospitals to control S. aureus infection and enterotoxins production.
Highlights
Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) is a major pathogen of increasing importance due to the rise in antibiotic resistance [1]
The present study highlights the high prevalence of enterotoxin genes, especially sea gene
Since detection of toxin genes does not necessarily mean the ability of toxin production, our results suggest that measurement of expression level of those toxins at the transcript level is necessary to evaluate the potential of S. aureus to cause severe disease
Summary
Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) is a major pathogen of increasing importance due to the rise in antibiotic resistance [1]. It is often found as a commensal associated with skin, skin glands, and mucous membranes, mainly in the nose of healthy individuals [2]. S. aureus can produce exotoxins including exfoliative toxins, leukocidins, toxic shock syndrome toxin-1 (TSST-1) and staphylococcal enterotoxins (SEs) [6]. The spectrum of staphylococcal diseases ranges from pimples and furuncles to toxic shock syndrome and sepsis, most of which depend on many virulence factors. Some diseases, such as staphylococcal food poisoning, rely on only one type of virulence factors: the staphylococcal enterotoxins (SEs) [4]
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