Prevalence, Virulence Genes, Antimicrobial Susceptibility, and Genetic Diversity of Staphylococcus aureus from Retail Aquatic Products in China

Abstract

Staphylococcus aureus is an important food-borne opportunistic pathogen that frequently causes severe blood and tissue infections or even fatal illnesses. Although S. aureus has been extensively studied in livestock and poultry foods in China, limited information has been reported in aquatic products. Accordingly, in this study, we aimed to characterize S. aureus in aquatic products purchased from retail markets in China. In total, 320 aquatic food samples were collected from 32 provincial capitals in China. The results showed that 119 samples (37.2%, 119/320) were positive for S. aureus by both qualitative and quantitative analyses. The contamination levels of 78.2% of samples ranged from 0.3 to 10 MPN/g, and six samples exceeded 110 MPN/g. A total of 119 S. aureus isolates from positive samples were selected to evaluate virulence factors, antibiotic resistance, and molecular characteristics. All S. aureus isolates were evaluated for the presence of 11 virulence genes by multiplex polymerase chain reaction, and α-hemolysin (hlα, 84.9%), fibronectin-binding protein A (fnbA, 79.0%), S. aureus enterotoxin E (see, 53.8%), and Panton-Valentine leucocidin (pvl, 50.4%) were identified as the major genes. These genes formed 56 different profiles, with the major profile identified as pvl-hlα-fnbA (28.6%). The antimicrobial susceptibility of all isolates was analyzed through the disk diffusion method, and the results showed high resistance to β-lactams, macrolides and tetracyclines, but susceptibility to linezolid and vancomycin. In addition, 26 sequence types (STs) were obtained via multilocus sequence typing, including seven novel STs, among which ST1 (20.2%), ST15 (18.5%), and ST188 (13.4%) were the most common STs. All the isolates were mecC negative, but nine isolates carrying mecA were evaluated by staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) typing, all of which were SCCmecIII or SCCmecIV types. Isolates of SCCmecIII showed a high prevalence and were multidrug resistant. Our results showed that aquatic products could be a vehicle for transmission of virulence genes and multidrug-resistant S. aureus, representing a potential public health risk. The STs identified in this study indicated the genetic diversity of S. aureus, thereby providing important basic data for the dissemination of S. aureus in aquatic products.

The Genomic Context for the Evolution and Transmission of Community-Associated Staphylococcus aureus ST59 Through the Food Chain

“…Given that the food chain is indispensable to human society, the assumption that contaminated food products may serve as vehicles for the spread of pathogens has been widely recognized (Ogata et al, 2012;Schoder et al, 2015;Oniciuc et al, 2017). However, most of the previous studies regarding MRSA in the food chain have only characterized the relationship between multiple bacterial isolates using multi-locus sequence typing (MLST) (Ge et al, 2017;Rodriguez-Lazaro et al, 2017;Rong et al, 2017;Tang et al, 2017;Wu et al, 2019), a method that is dependent on housekeeping genes. Thus, the genetic similarity of housekeeping genes cannot exclude the possibility that these isolates are derived from ancestors separated by earlier divergence events rather than by direct food chain-transmission.…”

Nasal colonisation, antimicrobial susceptibility and genotypic pattern of Staphylococcus aureus among agricultural biotechnology students in Besut, Terengganu, east coast of Malaysia

“…Molecular approaches were applied to distinguish between HA‐MRSA and CA‐MRSA strains. Commonly, HA‐MRSA strain would harbour SCC mec type I, II or III and does not frequently carry Panton–Valentine leukocidin ( pvl ) gene, whereas CA‐MRSA strain commonly carries SCC mec ‐IV or V and pvl gene . Previous studies in Malaysia from different localities and populations also indicated the presence of SCC mec ‐I and SCC mec ‐III in the nares of health science students living in the vicinity of the hospital and medical community .…”

“…The presence and emergence of pvl ‐positive MRSA have been described in clinical isolates or hospital‐associated MRSA (HA‐MRSA) , and the potential presence in CA‐MRSA is also of concern. One of the key features of CA‐MRSA is the presence of SCC mec types IV and V, as well as their coexistence with the pvl gene in some cases . Since recently, S. aureus colonisation and infection are no longer confined to patients with known risk factors or exposed to healthcare settings.…”

Retracted: Antibiotic resistance properties and genotypic characterization of enterotoxins in the Staphylococcus aureus strains isolated from traditional sweets

“…Fowoyo and Ogunbanwo (2017) reported that the S. aureus strains isolated from ready to eat foodstuffs exhibited the high prevalence of resistance against ampicillin (86.70%), trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (74.90%), amoxicillinclavulanic acid (52.50%), cefotaxime (3.50%), oxacillin (35.70%), ciprofloxacin (23.90%), erythromycin (15.70%), gentamicin (11.40%), and ofloxacin (7.10%). Rong, Wu, Xu, Zhang, and Yu (2017) reported that the prevalence of antibiotic resistance in the S. aureus strains isolated from different types of food samples against ampicillin, penicillin, amoxicillin-clavulanic acid, cefoxitin, ceftazidime, cefepime, kanamycin, streptomycin, amikacin, gentamicin, norfloxacin, ciprofloxacin, erythromycin, tetracycline, clindamycin, chloramphenicol, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, vancomycin, and rifampicin were 88.20, 88.20, 73.90, 8.40, 10.90, 8.40, 22.70, 14.30, 1.70, 4.20, 6.70, 5.00, 53.80, 26.90, 12.60, 7.50, 7.50, 0, and 2.50%, respectively.…”