Prevalence and relevance analysis of multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus of meat, poultry and human origin

The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence, antibiotic susceptibility and genotypes of S. aureus of human, meat and poultry origin in Henan Province in China. A total of 327 beef, pork, chicken and human samples collected from local grocery stores and hospital were investigated. The prevalence of S. aureus was found to be 26.7% in beef, 37.5% in pork, 30.1% in chicken and 54.8% in human samples, respectively. Isolates were commonly found resistant to ampicillin (66.9%), tetracycline (61.4%), ciprofloxacin (67.5%) and gentamicin (77.1%), however, none of the isolates was resistant to rifampin and vancomycin, and only one strain of human origin was resistant to vancomycin. The multidrug resistance was common among 66.3% of the isolates. Multilocus sequence typing (MLST) analysis showed that two sequence types namely ST-239 and ST-5 were primarily prevalent among chicken and pork isolates while the most prevalent sequence types among beef and human samples were ST-9 and ST-398, respectively. ST-5 was identified among all isolates, suggesting that the source of S. aureus contamination among animal food and man has some relevance.