Abstract
This study reports the distribution of enterotoxigenic determinants among staphylococci and the susceptibility of staphylococci to various classes of antibiotics. We observed all the isolates as resistant to beta-lactam antibiotics and a few as resistant to non-beta-lactam antibiotics such as clindamycin (47.4%), erythromycin (44.7%), gentamicin (23.7%), norfloxacin (34.2%), tetracycline (26.3%), trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (15.8%) etc. The resistance of S. sciuri (n = 1) and S. haemolyticus (n = 1) to rifampicin and intermediate resistance of S. gallinarum (n = 2) to teicoplanin, a high-end antibiotic, are also observed in this study. The multidrug-resistance (≥ 3 classes of antibiotics) was recorded in 23 (60.5%) isolates. The virulomes such as sea, seb, seg and sei were identified predominantly in S. haemolyticus. Surprisingly, certain isolates which were phenotypically confirmed as biofilm-producers by Congo red agar (CRA) test did not harbor biofilm-associated loci. This implies the protein-mediated mechanism of biofilm formation as an alternative to polysaccharide intercellular adhesin (PIA) in staphylococci. However, icaAD locus which encodes PIA was identified in 10 (26.3%) isolates and the eno locus, encoding elastin-binding protein which can accelerate the biofilm production, is identified in all the isolates. The possession of type V SCCmec elements by the S. haemolyticus (15.8%) raised the concern about the rapid dissemination of mecA gene to other species of staphylococci including the virulent S. aureus. In short, this study acknowledges the toxigenicity of coagulase-negative staphylococci (CoNS). Through this study, surveillance of antimicrobial resistance and transference of virulomes in staphylococci is warranted.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Dr. Rajendran Thomas, Senior Scientist, ICAR-National Research Centre on Pig (NRCP), Assam, India, for providing the lab facility to process the fish samples. We also thank Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India for providing financial support.
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This study was supported by Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India (BT/IN/indo-UK/AMR/06/BRS/2018-19).
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Conceptualisation and design of the study: GKS, BS and MH. Funding acquisition: BS and MH, GKS. Data acquisition and result interpretation: MKH, SS and S. Data curation on ethnography: JC. Original draft preparation: MKH, GKS. Review and editing of manuscript: JC and MH, GKS. All the authors critically reviewed and approved the manuscript for the publication.
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Muneeb, K.H., Sudha, S., Sivaraman, G.K. et al. Virulence and intermediate resistance to high-end antibiotic (teicoplanin) among coagulase-negative staphylococci sourced from retail market fish. Arch Microbiol 203, 5695–5702 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-021-02558-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-021-02558-2