antibiotic resistance and molecular typing pattern of meat-isolated s. aureus

Diseases resulting from consuming contaminated food are named foodborne illnesses, and staphylococcus aureus is one of the leading causes. food product contamination may be occurred during manipulation, food preparation, and processing. because of its high discriminatory power, pulsed field gel electrophoresis (pfge) is the most applied genotyping tool for epidemiological studies and identification of foodborne outbreaks caused by different pathogens, including staphylococcus aureus. according to the above, this study aims to evaluate antibiotic resistance and determine the molecular characterization of s. aureus isolated from meat by the pfge method. a total of 51 isolates of s. aureus, isolated from beef and lamb samples, were confirmed by pcr using the 23s rrna gene. the antimicrobial susceptibility test results indicated the highest resistance against penicillin and tetracycline antibiotics (80-66.7%) utilizing the disk diffusion method. pfge analysis with the restriction enzyme smai revealed 16 different patterns with bands ranging from 20.5 to 1135 kbp that were similar in some isolates. increased antibiotic resistance may result from common antibiotics overuse in farm animals and humans that are in touch with them. different band patterns in pfge analysis show the diversity of s. aureus strains in contaminated meat. so, this study highlights the need to use microbial contamination monitoring methods in the food industry in all stages of production and supply.