Distribution of virulence genes in clinical isolates of hospital-associated and community-associated methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus from Terengganu, Malaysia
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2024
Abstract
Staphylococcus aureus is a common bacterial pathogen known to cause various kinds of infections due to its repertoire of virulence factors. This study aimed to investigate the distribution of 19 types of virulence genes among clinical isolates of methicillin-susceptible S. aureus (MSSA) using the polymerase chain reaction. A total of 109 MSSA isolates, i.e., 63 hospital-associated (HA) and 46 community-associated (CA) were collected from Hospital Sultanah Nur Zahirah, the main tertiary hospital in Terengganu, Malaysia, from July 2016 to June 2017. The most frequent virulence genes detected were hla (78.9%, n =86) and hld (78.0%, n =85) encoding hemolysins, lukED (56.9%, n =62) encoding leukotoxin ED, followed by seb (26.6%, n =29) and sea (24.8%, n =27) encoding enterotoxins. Among 34 (31.2%) isolates carrying six or more virulence genes, only five were multidrug resistant (MDR) while the remaining isolates were susceptible. Significant associations were discovered between the hld gene with CA-MSSA (p=0.016) p =0.016) and the seo gene with HA-MSSA (p=0.023). p =0.023). However, there is no significant association between virulence genes among the different types of infection. The clinical MSSA isolates in Terengganu showed high prevalence and high diversity of virulence gene carriage.
Keywords
Methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus, virulence genes, CA-MSSA, HA-MSSA
Divisions
biomedsc
Funders
Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education (RAGS/1/2015/SKK0/UNISZA/02/1); (FRGS/1/2019/SKK11/UNISZA/02/1)
Publication Title
Tropical Biomedicine
Volume
41
Issue
2
Publisher
Malaysian Society of Parasitology and Tropical Medicine
Publisher Location
21-5-2, BLOCK, E, DIAMOND SQUARE, JALAN 3-50, OFF JALAN GOMBAK, KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA