Prevalence and antimicrobial susceptibility of Streptococcus species isolated from bovine mastitis

Abstract

Streptococcus is one of the major pathogen groups inducing bovine mastitis. The aim of this study was to investigate the antimicrobial resistance patterns of Streptococcus species isolated from bovine mastitis milk samples in Korea from 2016 to 2021. In total, 181 (10.3%) Streptococcal isolates were collected from 1,761 quarter milk samples at 122 farms; S. uberis 39.2% (n=71), S. dysgalactiae 29.3% (n=53), S. equinus 9.9% (n=18), S. suis 6.1% (n=11), S. parauberis 4.4% (n=8), S. lutetiensis 3.9% (n=7), others 7.2% (n=13). However, S. agalactiae was not isolated. The isolates showed the highest resistance rate to tetracycline (55.2%) followed by erythromycin (45.3%) and pirlimycin (36.5%). In contrast, all isolates were susceptible to ceftiofur, cephalothin, penicillin/novobiocin, and only single S. equinus isolate was resistant to both ampicillin and penicillin. Of 181 isolates, 64 (35.4%) were multidrug resistance (MDR). The resistance to pirlimycin of S. uberis (73.2%) was much higher than that of other species (0∼36.4%). All S. suis isolates were resistance to tetracycline. S. dysgalactiae showed lower resistance to erythromycin, pirlimycin and tetracycline than S. uberis and S. suis. The rate of MDR was relatively higher among S. uberis (73.2%) than among S. suis (36.4%), S. dysgalactiae (15.1%), others (0%). In conclusion, antimicrobial resistance in Streptococcus spp. should be regularly examined for appropriate therapies because the resistance patterns were various among the individual species.