Enterobacterial Repetitive Intergenic Consensus- PCR of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus Isolated from Pet Animals

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is one of the potential pathogens in pet animals and has public health hazards worldwide. This project aimed to investigate the frequency of MRSA in pet animals and to assess the antimicrobial susceptibility of the recovered strains as well as to determine the isolates genetic relatedness using Enterobacterial Repetitive Intergenic Consensus (ERIC)-PCR. Out of the 270 swab (nostril, mouth, and abscess swabs) samples collected from veterinary clinics and shelters in Mansoura city, Egypt, 64 (23.7%) S. aureus isolates (49/224; 21.8 % from cats and 15/46; 32.6% from dogs) were identified. Among them, 40.6% (26 /64) were confirmed to be MRSA and 59.4% (38/64) were identified as MSSA. Antimicrobial susceptibility test results showed the highest resistance rates of MRSA isolates to penicillin (100%), oxacillin (100%), followed by amoxicillin-clavulanic acid (92%), cefotaxime (92.4%), kanamycin, streptomycin, tetracycline (84.6%; 22/26 each), and lower resistance to vancomycin (38.5%).  Furthermore, MSSA isolates showed moderate resistance to amoxicillin-clavulanic acid (52.6%), followed by sulfamethoxazole trimethoprime (26.3%). Multi drug resistant (MDR) was found in all MRSA isolates (100%; 26/26) and the most identified antimicrobial resistance patterns was P, AMC, OX, CTX, TE, S, K. A total of 26 identified MRSA strains were divided into 22 ERIC-PCR groupings (A-V) that were categorized into two clusters, ERIC cluster I and ERIC cluster II. Among them, the most common ERIC type (11.5%) was ERIC A. The significance of multidrug resistance MRSA to public health needs continuous testing of antimicrobial medications against MRSA isolates. Also, ERIC PCR demonstrate promising typing that might be conveniently employed on a regular basis to study the genotypic alterations of MRSA, particularly in pets.