Pathogenic potential of Staphylococcus aureus colonizing the nasal cavity and lungs of monkeys

Abstract

In this paper, data are presented on the study of genetic determinants of pathogenicity in S. aureus isolated from the respiratory tract of monkeys (nasal cavity and lungs) collected during 2017‒2019. The aim of this work is to determine some genes of pathogenicity and their combinations in S. aureus isolated from the nasal cavity of clinically healthy monkeys and from the lungs of monkeys that died from pneumonia. There was a high frequency of detection of adhesion genes (fnBpA ― 74.4 %, fnBpB ― 79.1 %, clfA ― 95.4 %, clfB ― 95.4 %), hemolysins (hla ― 83.7 %, hlb ― 81.4 %), Panton-Valentine leukocidin (pvl ― 48.1 %), which are regarded as markers of the increased pathogenicity of the microbe, as well as combinations of various genovariants. The hemolysin α gene was detected more often in S. aureus isolated from the lungs of monkeys with pneumonia (87.4 %), and the hemolysin β gene was found in almost all S. aureus isolated from the nasal cavity (96.2 %). Genes for fibronectin-binding proteins (fnBpA/B) were found with a high frequency in isolates detected from the nasal cavity, while the clumping factor gene (clfA/B) were isolated in 100 % of S. aureus studied. The genovariant hla-hlb-fnBpA-fnBpB-clfA-clfB was detected in almost half of the isolates (48.1%), the presence of all studied pathogenicity determinants (pvl-hla-hlb-fnBpA-fnBpB-clfA-clfB) was noted in 24.8 % S. aureus. Analysis of the high frequency of prevalence of genes responsible for the expression of pathogenicity factors confirms the pathogenicity of studied S. aureus isolates, detected in monkeys. Most of the isolates belonged to group IV of the regulatory gene (55.8%) and agr I takes second place (40.8 %). PCR detection of pvl, hla, hlb, fnBpA, fnBpB, clfA, clfB genes can be used to demonstrate the pathogenicity of S. aureus isolates from various animal biomaterials and serve as a criterion for epidemiological assessment in studying the S. aureus circulation in monkeys kept in captivity.