Nasal carriage of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in cattle and farm workers in Turkey

In the present study, nasal carriage rates of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in cattle and humans in close contact with cattle, and the resistance rates of MRSA isolates against various antibiotics were investigated. The nasal swab samples were collected from 35 different private farms (150 humans and 250 cattle) in the Afyonkarahisar province of Turkey. The nasal carriage rates of MRSA in humans and cattle were determined as 8.7 % (13/150) and 1.2 % (3/250), respectively. MRSA strains isolated from humans and animals were not supplied from the same sampled farms. In our study, the three phenotypic tests were also compared with the PCR results. Sensitivity for oxacillin agar screening test, oxacillin and cefoxitin disc diffusion tests was found to be 75 %, 50 % and 100 %, respectively, while the specificity of the three tests was 100 %. According to the antibiotic susceptibility test results, high resistance rates were determined against clindamycin (46.1 %), kanamycin (46.1 %), mupirocin (46.1 %), erythromycin (38.5 %), fusidic acid (38.5 %) and tetracycline (38.5 %) in 13 MRSA isolates obtained from humans. Resistance to clindamycin, erythromycin, fusidic acid, mupirocin, rifampicin and teicoplanin was determined in all 3 MRSA strains isolated from cattle nasal swab samples. This is the first study to investigate the status of nasal MRSA carriage in both cattle and farm workers in contact with these cattle in Afyonkarahisar.