Antimicrobial Resistance Trends in Staphylococcus aureus Strains Carried by Poultry in North of Morocco: A Preliminary Analysis

The transmission of antibiotic resistance to human population through food consumption is a global public health threat. This study aimed to assess the nasopharyngeal carriage of S. aureus in poultry and to investigate antimicrobial susceptibility and virulence-associated genes. Nasopharyngeal swabs were collected from chickens at the slaughterhouse of Tangier and immediately transported to the microbiological laboratory for phenotypic identification and assessment of antibiotic susceptibility. The presence of 16S rRNA, nuc, mecA, mecC, Panton-Valentine leukocidin (PVL), and the toxic shock syndrome toxin 1 (TSST-1) genes were detected by PCR analysis for all isolates. Overall, 548 nasopharyngeal swabs were collected, of which 17 (3.4%) were S. aureus positive. More than half of the strains (54%) were resistant to penicillin, 29.4% to tetracycline, 23.5% to erythromycin, and 17% showed resistance to ciprofloxacin. The mecA and mecC were not identified in any of the recovered isolates. Of the S. aureus recovered, 29.41% of the isolates were found to be toxinogenic; 17.64% and 11.76% were positive for PVL and TSST-1 encoding genes, respectively. The trends of antibiotic resistance and the toxinogenic S. aureus carried by the poultry intended for consumption in Tangier present a huge concern. Preventive and containment measures should be implemented in order to limit the dissemination of resistance genes through the food chain and to reduce their increased rate.