PREVALENCE OF Staphylococcus aureus IN SOME STREET FOOD SAMPLES AND THEIR ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE STATUS

Abstract

Street vended foods are widely consumed because of its appealing taste, reasonable price, and convenience, but present a high risk of contamination with Staphylococcus aureus, one of the leading causes of food poisoning worldwide. This study aimed at investigating the occurrence of S. aureus in 40 street food samples, their antibiotic resistant status, and their enterotoxigenic genes. The results showed that 12.5% of food samples were positive for S. aureus and 7.5% for Methicillin-resistant S. aureus. Antibiotic susceptibility test revealed that 31/31 isolates were resistant to at least one of the tested antibiotics, including penicillin, gentamicin, cefoxitin, clarithromycin, and tetracycline. Multidrug-resistant S. aureus accounted for 45.2% of all isolates. Enterotoxin genes, including sea and seb, were detected at low percentages. One strain (namely BTT6) derived from mixed rice paper was identified as Methicillin-resistant S. aureus with the seb gene. The results indicated that the tested street foods became a public health hazard because of a high prevalence of antibiotic-resistant S. aureus, especially multidrug-resistant S. aureus.