Abstract
Introduction: Staphylococcus aureus enterotoxins play an important role in the incidence of food poisoning
and various other syndromes are occurred such as staphylococcal scalded skin syndrome and toxic shock
syndrome.
Objectives: The purpose of the present study was to investigate the frequency of enterotoxin B and C genes
among S. aureus isolates from clinical samples obtained from inpatients of a hospital by polymerase chain
reaction (PCR).
Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study conducted during the period July to December 2015.
Clinical samples including blood, urine, wounds and nasal mucosa samples were collected from a hospital
in Ahvaz, southwest of Iran and screened for S. aureus strains by several phenotypic and biochemical tests.
A total of 132 clinical samples were collected from which 60 samples were infected with the S. aureus
strains. Then PCR assay was carried out to determine the entB and entC genes prevalence among these
isolates.
Results: Molecular analysis revealed that only 8 (13.3%) isolates harbored the entB and/or entC genes. Five
strains (8.3%) contained only entB gene, 2 strains (3.3%) contained entC gene and only one strain (1.7%)
was simultaneously positive for both entB and entC genes. There was no significant difference among
various age groups regarding enterotoxin genes (P=0.551).
Conclusion: These results demonstrated that enterotoxin-producing strains have a relatively low incidence in
clinical samples in understudy hospital, but monitoring of their prevalence is necessary in regular screening
programs in order to find the possible increase in their prevalence and prevention of their outcomes.