Pets are becoming human surrogates for social life where common pathogens like Staphylococcus aureus may shift across to potentiate pathogenic factors. Current study was planned to investigate mec A gene, regressed preventive factors, and antimicrobial variants in S. aureus of pets, pet owners/personals, and the environment of animal treatment sites. Swab samples were put to microbiological identification of S. aureus and later the mecA gene. A dichotomous questionnaire having assumed risk factors was filled in at the time of sample collection. The representative mecA positive samples were subjected to antibiotic susceptibility using disk diffusion method. The descriptive statistics and logistic regression analysis were applied on collected data with 5% probability. Study found 30.43, 33.91, 25.0, and 50.0% mecA positive in cats, dogs, pet owners, and environment, respectively. The MRSA strains were 80, 100, 100, and 50% sensitive to chloramphenicol from cats, dogs, humans, and environment sources, respectively. On the other hands, 41.73 and 25.86% of fusidic acid sensitive MRSA from cats and the environment, respectively, while 100% fusidic acid resistant variants of MRSA were found from environment source. Diseased cases (cat OR=0.375, dog=OR=0.375, humans OR=0.333), infection on body (cat OR=0.050, dog=0.238), previous use of antibiotics (Cat OR=0.057), pet access to bed room (human OR=0.368), and often kissing to pet (human OR=0.373) were unexpected factors that did not prove to be potential risks by multiple logistic regression analysis. The present study found higher prevalence of mecA (MRSA), altered pattern of risk factors at animal-human-environment interface along with increased variants of antimicrobial resistance.

To Cite This Article: Shoaib M, Rahman SU, Aqib AI, Ashfaq K, Naveed A, Kulyar MFeA, Bhutta ZA, Younas MS, Sarwar I, Naseer MA and Ghaffar A, 2020. Diversified epidemiological pattern and antibiogram of mecA gene in Staphylococcus aureus isolates of pets, pet owners, and environment. Pak Vet J, 40(3): 331-336. http://dx.doi.org/10.29261/pakvetj/2020.039