Prevalence and mechanism of antimicrobial resistance in Staphylococcus aureus isolates from diseased cattle, swine and chickens in Japan.

Antimicrobial administration is essential for the control and treatment of diseases in animals, but the emergence and prevalence of antimicrobial-resistant Staphylococcus aureus is a significant concern during animal production. Here we investigated the antimicrobial susceptibility of S. aureus from diseased food-producing animals and molecularly characterized the methicillin-resistant and fluoroquinolone-resistant isolates. A total of 290 S. aureus isolates obtained from cattle (n=246), swine (n=16), and chickens (n=28) between 2003 and 2009 were examined for antimicrobial susceptibility against 9 antimicrobials using an agar dilution method. Resistance to penicillin (PC) was most frequently found (24.8%), followed by oxytetracycline (OTC, 10.0%), dihydrostreptomycin (4.1%), erythromycin (EM, 3.1%), enrofloxacin (ERFX, 2.1%), and kanamycin (1.7%). The PC resistance rate was significantly higher in swine than in cattle (P<0.01) and chickens (P<0.01). The resistance rates to OTC, EM and ERFX were significantly higher in swine and chickens than in cattle (P<0.05). Methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) was recovered from milk derived from a cow with mastitis in 2003; sequence type 8, SCCmec type IV and spa type t024. In the six ERFX-resistant strains isolated after 2003, amino acid substitutions in ParC with/without GyrA were detected. As the prevalence of MRSA and FQ-resistant S. aureus in the animals should be noticed, continuous monitoring is necessary to control resistance to clinically important antimicrobials in S. aureus from food-producing animals.