Livestock veterinarians at high risk of acquiring methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus ST398.

Mar 2012

Garcia-Graells C, Antoine J, Larsen J, Catry B, Skov R, Denis O.

Source

Laboratoire de Référence MRSA - Staphylocoques, Department of Microbiology, Université Libre Bruxelles-Hôpital Erasme, Brussels, Belgium. cgarciag@ulb.ac.be

Abstract

The prevalence and risk factors associated with livestock-associated MRSA (LA-MRSA) carriage was examined in Danish and Belgian veterinarians. The MRSA and LA-MRSA carriage rates were 9·5% (95% CI 5·3-15·6) and 7·5% (95% CI 3·8-13·1) for MRSA and LA-MRSA, respectively, in Belgium and 1·4% (95% CI: 0·17-5·05) in Denmark (all Danish MRSA isolates belonged to the LA-MRSA genotype). All LA-MRSA isolates were resistant to tetracycline and 53·4% (7/13) showed a multi-resistant phenotype. LA-MRSA was significantly associated with veterinarians in contact with livestock (P=0·046). In the multivariable analysis, working with small animals in a veterinary clinic seems to be negatively associated (OR 0·15, 95% CI 0-1·0, P=0·05) and a strong direct association was found for LA-MRSA acquisition and exposure to live pigs (OR 12·1, 95% CI 1·6-548·5, P=0·01). Since carriage of MRSA ST398 may increase the risk of complications during hospitalization, our results underline that preventive measures may need to be developed for veterinary professionals, particularly for livestock veterinarians.

PubMed

Genetic Analysis of High-Level Mupirocin Resistance in ST80 clone of Community-Associated Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

Genetic Analysis of High-Level Mupirocin Resistance in ST80 clone of

Community-Associated Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

J Med Microbiol. 2009 Oct 15

Udo EE, Sarkhoo E.

Kuwait University.

Four Community- associated MRSA isolates expressing high-level mupirocin resistance (MIC: greater then1024mg/L) were isolated from four sites of a diabetic patient and characterized for the genetic location of their resistance determinants and typed using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), SCCmec coagulase gene and multilocus sequence typing to ascertain their relatedness. The presence of genes for resistance to high-level mupirocin (mupA), tetracycline (tetK) and fusidic acid (far 1), Panton-Valentine leukocidin (PVL), accessory gene regulators (agr) and capsular polysaccharide (cap) were detected in PCR assays. They were resistant to kanamycin, streptomycin, tetracycline, fusidic acid and cadmium acetate. They harboured mupA, tetK, far1, PVL, agr 3 and cap8.

They had identical PFGE pattern, coagulase gene type, possessed type IV SCCmec element and belonged to sequence type 80 (ST80). In contrast, they had three different plasmid profiles consisting of (1) 28.0 and 26.0 kb, (2) 28.0, 21.0 and 4.0 kb, (3). 41.0 and 4.0 kb. Genetic studies located resistance to tetracycline, fusidic acid and cadmium acetate on the 28 kb plasmids and mupA on related non conjugative 26 kb and 21 kb plasmids. One of the 21-kb mupirocin resistance plasmids was derived from the 41 kb plasmid during transfer experiments. The emergence of high-level mupirocin resistance in ST80-SCCmec-IV MRSA clone demonstrates the increasing capacity of CA-MRSA clones to acquire resistance to multiple antibacterial agents.

The presence of different plasmid profiles in genetically identical isolates created difficulty in interpretation of typing results and highlighted the weakness of using plasmid analysis as a sole method for strain typing.

PMID: 19833783 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]