Environmental Streptococcus uberis Associated with Clinical Mastitis in Dairy Cows: Virulence Traits, Antimicrobial and Biocide Resistance, and Epidemiological Typing

Abstract

Mastitis remains a serious problem for dairy animals. The misappropriation of antimicrobial agents helps accelerate resistance, which poses a serious challenge in controlling environmental S. uberis infection. Here, we study the virulence attributes, antimicrobial and biocide resistance, and epidemiological typing of S. uberis recovered from bovine clinical mastitis in dairy farms of diverse hygienic interventions in Egypt. The overall S. uberis infection rate was 20.59%; all were multidrug-resistant (MDR). The sua gene was the most frequent virulence gene (42.02%), followed by pauA (40.57%), cfu (21.73%), skc (20.28%), and opp (11.59%). The erm(B) gene served as the predominant antimicrobial-resistant gene (75.36%), followed by fexA (52.63%) and tet(M), blaZ, and aac(6′)aph(2″) genes (46.38% each). Of note, 79.71%, 78.26%, and 18.84% of S. uberis isolates harbored qacED1, qacC/D, and qacA/B genes, respectively. All analyzed isolates were S. uberis type I by their unique RFLP–PCR pattern. In conclusion, the sustained presence of pauA and sua genes throughout the investigated farms contributes to a better understanding of the bacterium’s pathogenicity. Furthermore, MDR coupled with the existence of biocide resistance genes indicates the importance of S. uberis surveillance and the prudent use of antimicrobials in veterinary clinical medicine to avoid the dissemination of antimicrobial resistance.

Functional promiscuity of small multidrug resistance transporters fromStaphylococcus aureus,Pseudomonas aeruginosa, andFrancisella tularensis

“…These studies show that EmrE homologs in other bacterial species can confer resistance to similar substrates, but the scope of the assays was limited to common multidrug resistance substrates and detection of resistance phenotypes. Here we analyze SMRs from three bacterial species of interest for the potential to cause disease in humans or animals for comparison with EmrE: Staphylococcus aureus (SAsmr) (42)(43)(44)(45), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PAsmr) (46,47), and Francisella tularensis (FTsmr) (48). These particular transporters were selected on the basis of disease relevance, sequence diversity (Fig.…”

Whole-Genome Sequencing of Gram-Negative Bacteria Isolated From Bovine Mastitis and Raw Milk: The First Emergence of Colistin mcr-10 and Fosfomycin fosA5 Resistance Genes in Klebsiella pneumoniae in Middle East

“…Mastitis is one of the most prevalent diseases in dairy cows, producing well-recognized detrimental effects on animal health and profitability of dairy farms ( Ruegg, 2017 ; Abd El-Aziz et al, 2021a ). Treatment of mastitis is often applied without prior knowledge of cause-related agents and mostly with broad-spectrum antimicrobials, which are known to enhance resistance evolution to a greater extent.…”

Multilocus Sequence Genotype Heterogeneity in Streptococcus uberis Isolated from Bovine Mastitis in the Czech Republic

“…In some countries, the occurrence of virulence genes was similar [ 10 ], whereas in others, the situation was quite different. As an example of the different detection rates, the oppF gene was detected in almost 100% of isolates in Thailand, New York State, and the Czech Republic [ 3 , 30 ], but in the study of El-Aziz et al [ 31 ] in Argentina, the oppF gene was detected in only 12% of the S. uberis isolates. The results of this study also showed a very different occurrence of the pauA/skc gene.…”