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. 2023 May 26;12(11):2161.
doi: 10.3390/foods12112161.

Staphylococcus aureus in the Processing Environment of Cured Meat Products

David Pérez-Boto  1 , Matilde D'Arrigo  2 , Ana García-Lafuente  2 , Daniel Bravo  1 , Aida Pérez-Baltar  1 , Pilar Gaya  1 , Margarita Medina  1 , Juan L Arqués  1
Affiliations

Staphylococcus aureus in the Processing Environment of Cured Meat Products

David Pérez-Boto et al. Foods. .

Abstract

The presence of Staphylococcus aureus in six dry-cured meat-processing facilities was investigated. S. aureus was detected in 3.8% of surfaces from five facilities. The occurrence was clearly higher during processing (4.8%) than after cleaning and disinfection (1.4%). Thirty-eight isolates were typified by PFGE and MLST. Eleven sequence types (STs) were defined by MLST. ST30 (32%) and ST12 (24%) were the most abundant. Enterotoxin genes were detected in 53% of isolates. The enterotoxin A gene (sea) was present in all ST30 isolates, seb in one ST1 isolate, and sec in two ST45 isolates. Sixteen isolates harbored the enterotoxin gene cluster (egc) with four variations in the sequence. The toxic shock syndrome toxin gene (tst) was detected in 82% of isolates. Regarding antimicrobial resistance, twelve strains were susceptible to all the antibiotics tested (31.6%). However, 15.8% were resistant to three or more antimicrobials and, therefore, multidrug-resistant. Our results showed that in general, efficient cleaning and disinfection procedures were applied. Nonetheless, the presence of S. aureus with virulence determinants and resistance to antimicrobials, particularly multidrug-resistant MRSA ST398 strains, might represent a potential health hazard for consumers.

Keywords: MRSA; antibiotic resistance; enterotoxin; virulence.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Dendrogram of the SmaI profiles of 34 S. aureus isolates from environmental surfaces and products of dry-cured meat-processing facilities.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) of the 38 S. aureus isolates from environmental surfaces and products of dry-cured meat-processing facilities. The STs are displayed as circles, proportional to the number of isolates. The origin (processing plant) of the isolates is shown with different colors.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Scheme of different egc types, along with the associated ST. The amino acid substitutions compared with the wild type (deposited sequence of amino acids) in the genes are also shown.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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