Occurrence of enterotoxins, exfoliative toxins and toxic shock syndrome toxin-1 genes in Staphylococcus aureusand CoNS isolated from clinical and food samples in Algeria

Abstract

The aim of this study was to determine the occurrence of toxin-genes carried by strains of Staphylococcus aureusand Coagulase Negative Staphylococci (CoNS) in Algeria. The present study performed two set multiplex PCR assay using specific primers for screening of 8 genes encoding for classical enterotoxins (SEs) (seato see), Exfoliative Toxins (eta, etb) and Toxic Shock Syndrome Toxin-1 (tst). We analyzed 51 strains isolated from food samples and 45 strains originated from clinical cases. We observed that more than half of food strains (52.94%) possessed at least one of SEs genes; where S. aureusappears to be potentially enterotoxigenic than CoNS (68.18% vs 41.37%). From all the SEs genes amplified (27), sedgene (19;70.37%) was the most frequently detected. In clinical isolates, only 6 (13%) S. aureusharboured at least one SEs genes. However, 55.55% of clinical isolates (S. aureusor CoNS) possessed tstgene for Toxic Shock Syndrome Toxin-1. There were no foods or clinical isolates detected to possess exfoliative toxins genes (eta, etb). In conclusion, this study showed high frequency of SEs genes in food isolates, and tstgene in clinical isolates; our findings provide updated data on the Staphylococci toxins carriage in Algeria.