Characterization of Coagulase Positive Staphylococci from Pig Carcasses from Swedish Slaughterhouses

Abstract: The aim was to characterize 100 coagulase positive staphylococci isolates originating from pig carcasses from Swedish slaughterhouses by biotyping, antibiotic susceptibility testing, typing with pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and real-time PCR-screening of the enterotoxin genes sea, sec, seg and sei in order to evaluate the impact on human health. The biotyping classified 56 as non host specific (NHS), 29 as human biotype, five as poultry, one as ovine, one as bovine biotype and eight were unclassified (UCF). Susceptibility testing to 16 antibiotics revealed that 49% of the isolates were resistant to penicillin, which the biotype human dominated among these isolates. The results from the PFGE showed correlation between the biotypes and the pulsotypes obtained with several groups with identical strains. The results from the 47 isolates tested for enterotoxins were that the combination of seg and sei was the most common but sea and sec were also detected. There were slaughterhouses that had certain biotypes and penicillin resistance linked to them.