Abstract:
Staphylococcus aureus is a potentially harmful human pathogen associated with nosocomial and
community-acquired infections, and is becoming alarmingly immune to most antibiotics. The
aim of the present study was to evaluate the association of mecA gene polymorphism and drug
resistance pattern of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus from river water samples. A
purposive sampling technique was used to collect water samples from different sites of Keha and
Shinta rivers. Isolation of MRSA was conducted following standard morphological, biochemical
and molecular characterizations. Susceptibility of isolates were done to 8 antibiotics, including
penicillin (10 µg), ampicillin (10 µg), vancomycin (30 µg), gentamicin (10 µg), tetracycline (30
µg), erythromycin (15 µg), chloramphenicol (30 µg) and ciprofloxacin (5 µg) (Mast, Merseyside,
UK) using the agar disk diffusion method on Mueller-Hinton agar plates. Genomic DNA of the
isolates was isolated by using DNA Extraction Kit (GenElutetm., USA). Amplification of mecA
gene was done by PCR using specific primer for the mecA gene. The PCR products were
visualized using agarose gel-electrophoresis with 1.5% gel. The results showed that four (66.7%)
Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus isolates showed to have 499 bp band size of mecA
gene. This study showed that PCR assay is an easy and effective method for detecting
Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus from various samples such as, water samples.
Therefore, the present study indicated that, the rivers are potential sources of Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections
