Abstract
The purpose of this study was molecular characterization of the antibiotic resistance profiles of some Enterococcus isolates obtained from different hospitals in Taif governorate in KSA. Out of the 89 bacterial isolates obtained, 12 isolates of Enterococcus spp. were subjected to fingerprinting based on repetitive sequence-based polymerase chain reaction (Rep-PCR), and tested their resistance/susceptibility against some antibiotics which are commonly used in KSA. They were identified using the specific primers for different antibiotic resistance genes of Enterococcus spp. as Tuf, VanC-1, VanC-2-VanC-3 genes and sequencing fragments of 16S rDNA gene. The obtained results indicated that about 58.3% of Enterococcus isolates were Enterococcus faecium, 16.6% were Enterococcus durans and 25.1% were other Enterococcus species. Sixty-seven per cent of the isolates had multi-drug resistance patterns against gentamicin, vancomycin, erythromycin, amoxicillin, cefazolin and tetracycline. Data on the prevalence and types of antibiotic resistance in Enterococcus species may be used to describe baseline antibiotic susceptibility profiles associated with Enterococcus spp. that were isolated from the hospitals' environment. Some discrepancies were detected among the identification methods used, and the most reliable were the Tuf, VanC-1, VanC-2-VanC-3 genes, and 16S rDNA nucleotide sequencing of 12 Enterococcus isolates were deposited in Gene Bank under the accession numbers from KT366721 to KT366732, respectively. Selected isolates exhibited susceptibility to almost all studied antibiotics, and some virulence factors were detected by PCR. Finally, these Enterococcus isolates were molecularly characterized by Rep-PCR into a diverse genetic background. The data collected may also help to elucidate the role of hospitals in the transmission of antibiotic-resistant strains to human populations.