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High prevalence of methicillin resistant and enterotoxin gene-positive Staphylococcus aureus among nasally colonized food handlers in central Iran

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Abstract

This study defined the prevalence of enterotoxin gene-positive Staphylococcus aureus strains among food handlers and non-food processing healthy nasal S. aureus carriers in central Iran. Meticillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) strains were diagnosed by cefoxitin disk diffusion. PCR was used to detect the mecA, Sa442, and enterotoxin genes. Out of the 1113 food handlers, 224 (20.1%) were nasal carriers of S. aureus and 157 (70.1%) of these isolates were positive for one or more enterotoxin genes. The most prevalent enterotoxin gene was sei (40.2%), followed by seg (35.3%), sea (23.5%), seb (15.2%), sec (5.5%), and seh (2.7%). See and sed genes were not found. Sixty seven (42.7%) of enterotoxin gene-positive isolates possessed a single enterotoxin gene, and 64 (40.8%), 23 (14.7%), and 3 (1.9%) contained two, three, or four enterotoxin genes, respectively. The most frequently detected gene combination was sei/seg (n = 35, 22.3%). Thirty seven (16.5%) isolates were diagnosed as MRSA, and 27 (73%) of these strains were positive for at least one enterotoxin gene. Out of 546 healthy controls, 100 individuals were identified as S. aureus nasal carriers; among the strains, 39 (39%) were positive for at least one enterotoxin gene. Only one (1%) CA-MRSA was identified among the strains from the volunteers. A high prevalence of meticillin resistant and enterotoxin-positive S. aureus were documented in food handlers. We suggest that this may be due to the frequent handling of contaminated foodstuffs and that this is possibly related to the elevated frequencies of acquired staphylococcal food poisoning in this population.

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Acknowledgments

This paper is extracted from the thesis by Saeed Fooladvand to fulfill the requirement for a Master of Sciences in medical bacteriology at Arak University of Medical Sciences, Iran.

Funding

This work was conducted with financial assistance from Arak University of Medical Sciences, Iran. Authors would like to appreciate this contribution.

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Author notes

  1. Saeed Fooladvand and Hossein Sarmadian contributed equally to this work and should be considered co-first authors.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medical Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, Arak University of Medical Sciences, Arak, Iran

    Saeed Fooladvand & Ehsanollah Ghaznavi-Rad

  2. Department of Infectious Diseases, Arak University of Medical Sciences, Arak, Iran

    Hossein Sarmadian

  3. Department of Biostatistics, Faculty of Medicine, Arak University of Medical Sciences, Arak, Iran

    Danial Habibi

  4. Data Analytics Unit, BioMérieux, La Balme les Grottes, France

    Alex van Belkum

  5. Molecular and Medicine Research Center, Faculty of Medicine, Arak University of Medical Sciences, Arak, Iran

    Ehsanollah Ghaznavi-Rad

Authors
  1. Saeed Fooladvand
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  2. Hossein Sarmadian
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Correspondence to Ehsanollah Ghaznavi-Rad.

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Fooladvand, S., Sarmadian, H., Habibi, D. et al. High prevalence of methicillin resistant and enterotoxin gene-positive Staphylococcus aureus among nasally colonized food handlers in central Iran. Eur J Clin Microbiol Infect Dis 38, 87–92 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10096-018-3398-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10096-018-3398-0

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