Prevalence, characterization and antibiotic resistance of enterococci from traditional cheeses in Turkey

The aim of the present work is to provide information about Enterococcus strains isolated from traditional Turkish cheese samples in Ankara (Turkey), focusing on their prevalence, phenotypic and genotypic characteristics, and antibiotic resistance. A total of 213 probable enterococcal isolates isolated from 215 samples were identified by phenotypic and genotypic methods. As a result of 16S rDNA sequence analysis, 88 of the 213 enterococci strains were identified as Enterococcus faecium and 125 as Enterococcus faecalis. The E. faecalis strains (58.7%) were identified as the dominant species isolated from cheese samples in Turkey. The 213 Enterococcus strains were tested for susceptibility to 12 different antimicrobial agents. The resistance phenotype were as follow: nalidixic acid (100%), kanamycin (98.6%), rifampicin (78.4%), ampicillin (48.8%), ciprofloxacin (45.5%), erythromycin (18.8%), tetracycline (11.7%), penicillin G (5.6%), chloramphenicol (4.2%), gentamycin (3.8%) and streptomycin (1.4%). None of the strains was resistant to vancomycin. E. faecium strains showed more resistant phenotypes than E. faecalis strains as shown by the antibiotic resistance levels. It was also observed that the resistance of E. faecium and E. faecalis strains against the antibiotics was statistically significant (p ? 0.05). In total, 100% of E. faecium and 88.8% of E. faecalis strains were resistant to multiple drugs.