Prevalence of antibiotic resistance and virulence factors encoding genes in clinical Staphylococcus aureus isolates in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Background The present work intended to investigate the carriage of antibiotic resistance and virulence genes in multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus isolated from various clinical specimens. Methods A total of fifty S. aureus isolates from blood cultures, wound swabs, urine sample, nasal swabs, and sputum sample were examined for their antibiotic resistance against 20 different antibiotics by means of E-test, M.I.C Evaluator Strips, and disk diffusion methods. Detection of resistance and virulence-encoding genes (mecA, van, fnBPA, and Panton-Valentine Leucocidin (PVL)-encoding genes) was performed by PCR. Results In the current study, low number of MRSA isolates has been detected from five different clinical samples (22%, n = 50). In this study, we observed multiple drug resistance in S. aureus isolates from wound swabs; nasal swabs, blood cultures, and urine sample. No vancomycin-resistant genes were detected in all 50 isolates; similarly, no PVL and van genes were detected, while mecA and FnBP genes were detected in low number of isolates. Conclusion Although the number of MRSA and fnBPA-positive S. aureus reported in this study is generally low, and despite the absence of PVL and van-encoding genes, the results reported in this study may continue to shed some light on the prevalence of MRSA in Makkah, Saudi Arabia. Further epidemiological surveys are required together with additional infection control measures to limit the spread of MRSA particularly multidrug-resistant strains.