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Molecular biological characteristics of Staphylococcus aureus isolated from food

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Abstract

A survey was conducted to detect the distributing situation of Staphylococcus aureus in 6 kinds of food and the molecular biological characteristics of the isolates, so as to provide theoretical basis for our food risk monitoring. A total of 205 samples of 6 kinds of food were collected and examined for S. aureus. The GB 4789-2010 (food hygienic inspection method of China), mini VIDAS auto analysis, KB method and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) method were used to detect S. aureus, enterotoxin, drug sensitivity and homology analysis, respectively. The positive rates of S. aureus in the 205 samples were 15.6 % (32 samples), and the positive rates in raw milk were highest (30.0 %), with raw meat and aquatic products next and third (25.0and 12.0 %), cooked meat and milk products (10.0 % and 7.5 %, respectively). No S. aureus was detected in ice creams. With shock culturing in 37 °C for 24 h, 14 strains (43.7 %) produced enterotoxin in the 32 strains of S. aureus. In the drug sensitive tests, in the 32 isolates, 87.5 % were resistant to penicillin; 84.4 % were resistant to ampicillin; 26 (81.3 %) were resistant to tetracycline; 20 (62.5 %) showed resistance to erythromycin. All of the 32 strains were sensitive to trimethoprim sulfamethoxazole, oxacillin, cefoxitin, gentamicin, and vancomycin. No methicillin-resistant S. aureus was isolated from our food samples. PFGE typing showed that S. aureus genotypes profile had significant difference between the strains, indicating diversity contamination of foodborne S. aureus.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention for the kind gift of sending Salmonella H9812. We also thank assistant researcher Xiao-yan Pei, National Institute of Nutrition and Food Safety, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, for his warmhearted help in analyzing PFGE fingerprint.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Anhui Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Hefei, 230061, China

    Shou-kui Hu & Wan-fu Hu

  2. Chizhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Chizhou, 247000, Anhui, China

    Shi-yun Liu

  3. The College of Public Health of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, 230061, China

    Tian-li Zheng

  4. State Key Laboratory for Infectious Disease Prevention and Control, National Institute for Communicable Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing, 102206, China

    Jian-guo Xu

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  1. Shou-kui Hu
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  2. Shi-yun Liu
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Correspondence to Shou-kui Hu.

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Hu, Sk., Liu, Sy., Hu, Wf. et al. Molecular biological characteristics of Staphylococcus aureus isolated from food. Eur Food Res Technol 236, 285–291 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00217-012-1887-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00217-012-1887-4

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