Investigating the prevalence of resistance genes in Listeria monocytogenes isolated from food samples

Subject Areas : Food microbiology

Mohammad Reza   Saebi ¹ (PhD student of food hygiene, Faculty of veterinary medicine, Islamic Azad University, Shahrekord Branch, Shahrekord, Iran)
Fahimeh  nourbakhsh ² (گروه میکروب شناسی، واحد شهرکرد، دانشگاه آزاد اسلامی، شهرکرد، ایران.)
Hossein  Khodabandeh shahraki ³ ()

Received: 2023-10-06 Accepted : 2023-10-21 Published : 2023-11-04

Keywords: Listeria monocytogenes, food, polymerization chain reaction, listeriosis, antibiotic resistance,

Abstract :

Listeria monocytogenes (L. monocytogenes) is a type of pathogenic bacteria that causes listeriosis infection. This facultative anaerobic bacterium is able to survive in the presence and absence of oxygen and is the cause of a wide range of diseases in humans and animals. Consumption of contaminated dairy products, meat and vegetables is the most important source of contamination. There are limited studies of the antibiotic resistance of Listeria monocytogenes species. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate the frequency and level of resistance in the evaluated samples. In this descriptive cross-sectional study, 150 different samples were randomly collected from different regions of Isfahan province. The samples included 60 samples of meat, 40 samples of dairy products (including milk, cheese, etc.) and 50 samples of vegetables (including leek, watercress, radish and basil). The serotyping of the isolated strains was done using the commercial O and H antisera of Listeria monocytogenes and according to the manufacturer's instructions, using slide agglutination method and antibiotic resistance evaluation. Standard PCR method was used to detect ermA, ermB, strA, tetS, tetA and ermC genes in the strains. Based on the serological reaction, somatic antigens O and flagella H of Listeria monocytogenes with the corresponding antisera, most Listeria species (70%) belong to serotype 1.2a and the rest from serotype 1.2b (19%) and 4b (11 %) They were. The results of the microbial investigation showed that the highest drug resistance was related to streptomycin (89%) and the lowest drug resistance in the evaluated isolates was related to ampicillin (14%) and chloramphenicol (13%). The most evaluated genes were related to strA gene and ermA gene, with frequencies of 79.8% and 65.4%, respectively. The prevalence of other Listeria monocytogenes genes evaluated in this study included tetA (17%), tetS (2.5%), ermB (10.7%) and ermC (2.1%).

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