Background: Clindamycin has been a good alternative drug to penicillins in the treatment of infections caused by Staphylococcus aureus but resistance to this agent has led to therapeutic failure. Inducible clindamycin resistance in staphylococci carrying erm genes may not be detectable by routine disk diffusion test. The objective of this study is to phenotypically detect clindamycin resistance in clinical S. aureus isolates and determine the prevalence of ermA, ermB and ermC carriage among these isolates. Methodology: A total of 230 non-duplicate S. aureus were isolated from children admitted to Mansoura University Children Hospital during the period January 2016 and June 2017 by conventional microbiology method. Invitro antibiotic susceptibility to selected antibiotics including erythromycin was performed by the disk diffusion technique. The "D-zone" test was used to phenotypically detect inducible clindamycin resistance. The presence of ermA, ermB and ermC genes was confirmed by multiplex polymerase chain reaction (m-PCR) assay. Results: One hundred and seven (46.6%) isolates were phenotypically resistant to erythromycin while 109 (47.3%) were methicillin (cefoxitin) resistant S. aureus (MRSA). The macrolidelincosamin-streptograminB (MLSB) phenotypes among the erythromycin resistant isolates were 47 (44%) inducible MLSB and 46 (43%) constitutive MLSB, while 14 (13.0%) were MS phenotype. Although, the MLSB phenotype was more predominant in MRSA (n=60, 56.1%) than MSSA (n=33, 30.7%) while the MS phenotype was more predominant in MSSA (n=9, 8.4%) than MRSA (n=5, 4.6%) isolates, the difference was not statistically significant (p=0.0777). The ermA (29.0%, n=31) and ermC (18.7%, n=20) were the most prevalent genes carried by the isolates while ermB was carried by a few (4.7%, n=5). Forty six (43%) isolates did not carry any detectable erm gene. Conclusion: In this study, both inducible and constitutive clindamycin resistance phenotypes were common among S. aureus isolates. Although the genetic basis for this may be attributed to carriage of ermA, ermB and ermC genes, a number of the resistant isolates did not carry any of these genes.

In te rnation a l J o u rn al of Dr u g D e ve lopm e n t a n d Re sea rc h In e e n n t t

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