Molecular detection of enterotoxin-producing Staphylococcus aureus isolates from sheep in the Sistan region southeast of Iran

Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) infections in livestock and humans pose serious health problems. Therefore, identifying the virulence genes of this bacterium and studying their characteristics are of great importance. The main objective of this study was to investigate the frequency of virulence (enterotoxin) genes of S. aureus isolated from sheep noses in the Sistan region. In this study, 100 isolates of S. aureus were collected. After genomic extraction of the identified isolates, a multiplex PCR reaction was performed for sea, seb, sec, see, tsst, and pvl genes using specific primers. In total, 49 isolates of S. aureus isolated contained one or more enterotoxin genes. The most abundant gene was tsst (37%), followed by sec (23%), seb (20%), and sea (2%). In general, it was found that the presence of S. aureus in sub-clinical animal isolates, especially enterotoxigenic strains, can be a potential health hazard.