Pathogenicity and antibiotic resistance of coagulase-negative staphylococci isolated from retailing chicken meat

Diverse coagulase-negative staphylococci (CNS) species isolated from meat are previously reported and considered as potential pathogenic staphylococci through obtain horizontal transferred elements (e.g. toxic, antibiotic resistance factors) from other bacteria. In this study, prevalence, homology and pathogenicity of CNS isolated from 180 raw chicken meat samples in retail markets were studied. The overall prevalence of CNS was 11.7% and centralized in 69.2% of Staphylococcus epidermidis and 30.8% of Staphylococcus warneri among diverse sources (including different retail settings, suppliers and products). Molecular typing showed highly homogenous patterns in the same species. Antibiotic susceptibility test revealed a common penicillin and erythromycin resistance among all of CNS, while 17 S. epidermidis isolates displayed multidrug resistance of gentamycin (GM)-kanamycin (K)-penicillin (P)-erythromycin (E), except one methicillin-resistant S. epidermidis isolate which was typed in staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) Ⅴ. Conclusively, diverse sourced raw chicken meat products exhibited a centralized prevalence of S. epidermidis and S. warneri, and a highly homogenous of genome in the same CNS specie. Though the negative toxigenicity of CNS was determined, constant multidrug resistance in S. epidermidis and P-E resistance in CNS need to be highly concerned regarding human health.