Epidemiology of Staphylococcus aureus in Bangalore, India: emergence of the ST217 clone and high rate of resistance to erythromycin and ciprofloxacin in the community

This study aimed to determine the antibiotic susceptibility pattern of Staphylococcus aureus (SA) and the circulating clones in Bangalore, India. Susceptibility testing was performed for all cases of SA infections in a tertiary-care hospital. Panton-Valentine leucocidin (PVL) encoding genes were detected, and sequence type and spa type were determined. Out of the 92 collected strains, 52.2% were methicillin-resistant SA (MRSA), isolated from community-acquired (CA) infections in 60.4% and hospital-acquired (HA) infections in 39.6%. S. aureus isolates were also highly resistant to erythromycin (54.3%) and ciprofloxacin (70.6%) in methicillin-susceptible SA (MSSA) and MRSA, as well as in CA and HA infections. MRSA were found to be significantly more resistant to gentamicin (p <0.001), cotrimoxazole (p <0.001) and ciprofloxacin (p 0.001) than MSSA, but no significant difference was observed between CA- and HA-SA. ST217 appeared as a new emerging and prevalent clone, but ST772 remained the predominant clone, all being PVL-positive isolates. Our study points out the high prevalence of MRSA, even in the community, and the worrying increase of resistance to ciprofloxacin and erythromycin among CA-MSSA. Emergence of clone ST217 is reported for the first time in India.