Molecular characterization of invasive Staphylococcus aureus strains isolated from patients with diabetes in Iran: USA300 emerges as the major type

Abstract There have been few studies focused on the molecular characterization of invasive Staphylococcus aureus strains in patients with diabetes in Iran. In the present study, 20 invasive S. aureus strains recovered from the patients with diabetes characterized by the virulence and resistance analysis, biofilm formation, staphylocoagulase (SC) typing, S. aureus protein A locus (spa) typing staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) typing, and multilocus sequence typing (MLST). Virulence gene detection indicated a high prevalence of strains encoding the pvl genes (50%), a low prevalence of the tst and seg gene (each of them was 5%) and a markedly high prevalence of fnbB (95%), fnbA (85%), icaD (75%), icaA (65%). A total of 3 coagulase types (III, 85%; II, 10%; V, 5%), 2 agr types (I, 90%; II 10%) and 2 SCCmec types (IV, 65%; III, 35%) and four different clones namely ST8-MRSA-IV/t008 (50%) (USA300), ST239-MRSA-III/t030 (35%), ST5-MRSA-IV/t002 (10%), and ST45-MRSA-IV/t038 (5%) were detected in this study. Eighty-five percent of the isolates were biofilm producers. All the 4 high-level mupirocin resistance (HLMUPR) strains belonged to CC/ST8-MRSA-IV/t008 clone and carried mupA gene. Fusidic acid-resistant isolate belonged to ST239-SCCmec III/t030 clone. One vancomycin-intermediate resistance isolates was detected in our study, which belonged to ST5-MRSA-IVt002. Circulating clone in MRSA strains (USA300) isolated from the patients with diabetes highlighting the possibility of transmission of these microorganisms' clones between hospital, community, and environments. However, further studies require providing critical insights into the importance of continued controlling and treatment of S. aureus infections in patients with diabetes.