Detection of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) frOm Foodstuffs, Foods and Cooking Facilities

Abstract

We tried to detect Staphylococcus aureus and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) strains from various samples in food preparation facilities in order to examine how MRSA contamination prevails in those fields. 1, 115 of 9, 844 samples (11.3%) were positive for S. aureus. Subsequently, 42 MRSA strains were obtained from 19 S. aureus positive samples, which mainly consisted of perishable or heat-treated dishes and compound dishes made at non-laboratory cooking facilities. The characteristics of MRSA strains were as follows: 1) coagulase type III was predominant (76.2%) in coagulase typing (I-VIII); 2) 81.0% of the strains produced neither enterotoxin (A to E) nor toxic shock syndrome toxin-1 (TSST-1); 3) 21.4%of the strai s showed strong resistance to methicillin (MIC;>200μg/ml) and most of them (88.9%) also derived from non-laboratory cooking facilities.
In conclusion, the MRSA strains detected from samples in food sanitation fields have considerably different features from those reported in clinical materials before, whereas the chance of detection is not very frequent.