Antimicrobial resistance profile of gram‐positive isolates belonging to the microbiota of non‐human primates

Abstract

Background The aim of this work was to identify gram‐positive bacteria and their respective resistance profiles of free‐living capuchin monkeys. Methods For this, 15 Sapajus nigritus were captured in a municipal urban park in the northern region of the state of Paraná, Brazil, and under pharmacological restraint, samples were collected with sterile swabs from the oral, rectal, ocular, nasal, and auricular regions. After isolation of the 22 gram‐positive bacteria, each isolate was subjected to the catalase and coagulase tests for presumptive identification. Subsequently, phenotypic tests for bacterial resistance were performed using the agar diffusion disc method. The samples resistant to oxacillin were submitted to the PCR technique to search for the mecA gene. Results Of the 22 gram‐positive cocci of these two (9.09%) are Streptococcus spp. and twenty (90.91%) Staphylococcus spp. Among Staphylococcus spp. three (13.64%) were coagulate‐negative (CoNS) and seventeen (86.36%) coagulate‐positive (CoPS). Of the antimicrobials tested, enrofloxacin had the best performance, with only one (04.54%) isolate resistant to it, on the other hand, the antimicrobials with the lowest performance were cefotaxime and penicillin with 19 (82.36%) and 18 (81.81%) resistant isolates, respectively. Only five isolates had MAR less than 0.2, being one ocular, one oral, and three nasal, they had multiple resistance index varied between 0.07 and 0.92, with an average of 0.45 and a mode of 0.3. Among the samples with the highest resistance index, a positive coagulase Staphylococcus stood out, being intermediate to gentamicin and resistant to other antibiotics and an intermediate streptococcus to gentamicin, enrofloxacin, and resistant to other antibiotics. No sample was positive to mecA gene. Conclusions Future studies should be conducted to identify the Staphylococcus species, the high rate of antimicrobial resistance of the monkeys in this study suggests that Grooming's behavior may be contributing to the sharing of the resistant microorganism among the members of this group of primates.