Prevalence of Panton-Valentine leukocidin genes in community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in the district of Pomoravlje

Background/Aim. Community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) strains appear to have rapidly disseminated among population in the community without established risk factors for MRSA worldwide. Panton-Valentine leukocidin (PVL) is a cytolytic toxin, encoded by the lukF-PV and lukF-PV genes. PVL may be the key toxin responsible for enhanced virulence of CA-MRSA. The aim of this study was to detect the genes encoding PVL in CA-MRSA isolates from healthy people from the District of Pomoravlje. Methods. We took throat and nose swabs from healthy, employed persons with mandatory sanitary examinations and analyzed the presence of MRSA, between January 2011 and December 2012 in the District of Pomoravlje. Susceptibility of isolated strains to cefoxitin was investigated by using disc diffusion according to the recommendation of CLSI (Clinical Laboratory Standard Institute), and by E test. The presence of penicillin-binding protein 2a (PBP2a) in Staphylococci was detected using latex agglutination Slidex ®MRSA Detection test. The gold standard, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay, was used for detection of mecA gene and PVL gene, and typing of SCCmec region. Results. Our investigation showed that staphylococcal carrier state was present in 2.58% of 52,910 throat and nasal swabs, and in 50 of them (3.67%) MRSA was isolated. Among these MRSA, 2 (4%) isolates were PVL-positive. Conclusion. The prevalence of CAMRSA and the presence of PVL gene among healthy, employed population in the District of Pomoravlje were low. The values obtained in this study show that, our region is not significantly different from the other parts of our country, nor from the other European countries