Prevalence and Antimicrobial Resistance of and Coagulase-Negative / from Retail Ground Meat: Identification of Broad Genetic Diversity in Fosfomycin Resistance Gene .

is a major bacterial species that contaminates retail meat products. The objective of this study was to clarify the prevalence, antimicrobial resistance and genetic determinants of / species in retail ground meat in Japan. From a total of 146 retail ground meat samples (chicken, pork, mixed beef/pork) purchased during a 5-month period, 10 and 112 isolates of coagulase-negative staphylococcus (CoNS)/ comprising 20 species were recovered. isolates were classified into five genetic types, i.e., -IIa/ST5, -VIc/ST352 (CC97), -VIIb/ST398, -Xa/ST15, and -XIc/ST9, which were all related to those of livestock-associated clones. All the staphylococcal isolates were -negative and mostly susceptible to all the antimicrobials tested, except for ampicillin among (resistance proportion; 50%). Among CoNS, the fosfomycin resistance gene was prevalent (30/112; 26.8%), primarily in , , and . Phylogenetic analysis of revealed the presence of seven clusters, showing broad diversity with 65-81% identity among different clusters. In the CoNS isolates from ground meat samples, was assigned into three clusters, and harbored the most divergent with three genetic groups. These findings suggested the circulation of multiple -carrying plasmids among some CoNS species.