Prevalence and molecular characterization of Staphylococcus aureus isolated from goats in Chongqing, China

Staphylococcus aureus is an important zoonotic pathogen which not only causes significant economic loss in livestock production but also poses a potential threat to public health. Compared with bovine and swine, the information on the colonization of S. aureus in goats is very limited. To understand the prevalence and characteristics of S. aureus in goats, we used the nasal swabs collected from apparently healthy goats to isolate S. aureus, and tested their antimicrobial susceptibility, virulence gene carrying levels, and multilocus sequence typing (MLST).

In 74 nasal swabs of apparently healthy goats, 32 (43.24%) S. aureus strains were isolated and identified, most of which were susceptible to many antibiotics, except for trimethoprim, furazolidone, amoxicillin, lincomycin and roxithromycin, and the resistance incidence of which were 50%, 40.63%, 37.5%, 28.13%, and 21.88% respectively. All the isolates were methicillin-susceptible S. aureus (MSSA) and mecA-negative. Enterotoxin genes were found in 53.13% of the strains. Of which, sej was the most prevalent (21.88%), followed by seb, sec, and see with the same level (18.75%). The most prevalent combination were seb + see and seb + tst. None of the S. aureus isolates harbored sea, sed, seh, eta and etb. Multilocus sequence typing (MLST) revealed 6 new alleles (aroe-552, aroe-553, glpf-500, pta-440, yqil-482 and yqil-496) and 5 new sequence types (STs) (3431,3440,3444,3445 and 3461). Using eBURST, the 5 STs were assigned to clonal complex 522 (CC522) and a further CC with no predicted ancestor. Phylogenetic analysis of seven concatenated MLST alleles revealed that the 5 STs were grouped into cluster I composed of S. aureus mainly from goats and sheep.

We provide the data for prevalence of S. aureus in goats in Chongqing municipality and their characterization which will help in tracking evolution of epidemic strains and their control methods.