Mostafa Nemati, Katleen Hermans, Fazel Pourahmad and Freddy Haesebrouck
Staphylococcus aureus is a major pathogen in humans and animals. Part of its pathogenicity is due to the production of extracellular protein toxins, called superantigens. In this study a groups of S. aureus isolates in Iran and Belgium from poultry were screened for genes encoding the exfoliative toxins (ETA and ETB), shock syndrome toxin-1 (TSST-1). Fifty S. aureus isolates from 20 poultry farms in Iran and Eighty-one isolates from 39 different industrial farms in Belgium were isolated by the standard biochemical methods. Ten of the isolates in Belgium have been characterized before as Meticillin Resistance Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). These isolates were screened for the genes encoding eta, etb, tst by PCR test. In none of these isolates, toxin gene sequences were amplified. These results indicate that superantigens encoded by genes that are detectable with the PCR tests used here, are not involved in poultry.
