Seems that 398 is not the only MRSA strain found in animals. This is not new knowledge but it would be interesting to persue the possibility that pigs are the mixing bowl for some of the recombinations that are blighting human health.
The agar diffusion method was used to compare the antimicrobial activity of B. subtilis NB-6, B. megaterium NB-3, B. mallei NB-8 and C. kutscheri NB-1 against methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) isolated from meat samples from sheep, bovine, camel and poultry in Amman area, Jordan. As shown in Table 1, substances produced by B. mallei NB-8 showed good antimicrobial activity against MRSA 2, MRSA 3, MRSA 5 and MRSA 13, and weak antimicrobial activity against MRSA 1, MRSA 7 and MRSA 8, while no antimicrobial activity against MRSA 6. MRSA 2, MRSA 5 and MRSA 8 were inhibited by substances produced by C. kutscheri NB-1. The other MRSA strains (MRSA 1, 3, 6, 7 and 13) were not inhibited at all. All MRSA strains were not inhibited by substances produced by B. subtilis NB-6 and B. megaterium NB-3 except MRSA strain 13 which was slightly inhibited by B. megaterium NB-3 produced substances.
S. aureus is an important cause of a variety of diseases in human and animals worldwide (Gilot and Leeuwen, 2004). Their ability to cause diseases in associated with several pathogenic factors including extracellular enzymes and toxins (Lee, 2003). Both animal and human isolates are generally resistant to penicillins (Seguin et al., 1999). Several reports suggest that the transfer of S. aureus between human and cattle is possible and that the infection of human by transmission through food products contaminated with animal MRSA is very plausible (Lee, 2003; Kaszanyitzky et al., 2003). Romero-Tabarez et al. (2006) has previously reported an antimicrobial activity of substances produced by B. subtilis (soil isolate) against multidrug resestant bacterial pathogen including methicillin-resistant S. aureus.
Bioline International Official Site (site up-dated regularly).
