TITLE:
Studies on Enterotoxins and Antimicrobial Resistance in Staphylococcus aureus Isolated from Various Sources
AUTHORS:
Enas Yasser Mohammed, Shaymaa Hassan Abdel-Rhman, Rasha Barwa, Mohammed Adel El-Sokkary
KEYWORDS:
S. aureus, Antimicrobial Susceptibility, Enterotoxins, Expression
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Microbiology,
Vol.6 No.4,
April
13,
2016
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.