Phenotypic and genotypic characterization of antibiotic resistance of methicillin-resistant isolated from hospital food.

BACKGROUND

Pathogenic biotypes of the Methicillin-resistant (MRSA) strains are considered to be one of the major cause of food-borne diseases in hospitals. The present investigation was done to study the pattern of antibiotic resistance and prevalence of antibiotic resistance genes of different biotypes of the MRSA strains isolated from various types of hospital food samples.

METHODS

Four-hundred and eighty-five raw and cooked hospital food samples were cultured and MRSA strains were identified using the oxacillin and cefoxitin disk diffusion tests and -based PCR amplification. Isolated strains were subjected to biotyping and their antibiotic resistance patterns were analyzed using the disk diffusion and PCR methods.

RESULTS

Prevalence of and MRSA were 9.69 and 7.62%, respectively. Meat and chicken barbecues had the highest prevalence of MRSA. Prevalence of bovine, ovine, poultry and human-based biotypes in the MRSA strains were 8.10, 8.10, 32.43 and 48.64%, respectively. All of the MRSA strains recovered from soup, salad and rice samples were related to human-based biotypes. MRSA strains harbored the highest prevalence of resistance against penicillin (100%), ceftaroline (100%), tetracycline (100%), erythromycin (89.18%) and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (83.78%). (72.97%), (72.97%), (64.86%) and (62.16%) were the most commonly detected antibiotic resistance genes.

CONCLUSIONS

Pattern of antibiotic resistance and also distribution of antibiotic resistance genes were related to the biotype of MRSA strains. Presence of multi-drug resistance and also simultaneous presence of several antibiotic resistance genes in some MRSA isolates showed an important public health issue Further researches are required to found additional epidemiological aspects of the MRSA strains in hospital food samples.