Isolation of enterotoxigenic Staphylococcus aureus from pet dogs and cats: a public health implication

Staphylococcus aureus is a globally distributed bacterium causing wide variety of illnesses in humans, which attributed to its ability to produce wide array of virulence factors, including enterotoxins that are responsible for staphylococcal food poisoning outbreaks. The current study was carried out to investigate the prevalence of enterotoxigenic S. aureus among pet dogs and cats and its public health implication. For this purpose, nasal, oral, and wound swabs were collected from 70 dogs and 47 cats, whereas nasal swabs were collected from 26 human contacts. All samples were examined for the presence of enterotoxigenic S. aureus by isolation of S. aureus in culture media and then tested by specific ELISA kits to detect the produced toxins in bacterial cultures. The prevalence of enterotoxigenic S. aureus was 10% and 2.1% for pet dogs and cats, respectively, whereas the nasal carriage rate in human contacts was 7.7%. The majority of animal isolates were obtained from mouth of the apparently healthy animals. All types of staphylococcal enterotoxins were detected in both animal and human isolates. High prevalence of enterotoxigenic S. aureus among pet dogs highlights the possibility of zoonotic transmission to human contacts leading to nasal and/or hand carriage of such strains; thus, pet animals may be incriminated in the epidemiology of household staphylococcal food poisoning outbreaks.