Slime Production and Antimicrobial Resistance in Coagulase -negative Staphylococci Isolated from Breast-milk of Lactating Mothers

Background: The slime that produces by bacteria are responsible for many chronic infections and it's not easy to treat because they showing more resistance to antibiotic. Clearly it's the main virulence factors that determined pathogenicity of coagulase-negative staphylococci (CoNS), and found to be slime production and their effect on resistance of antibiotic.

Objective: This study was conducted to evaluate slime production and antibiotic resistance in CoNS isolated from breast-milk of lactating mothers

Study Design: Point prevalence cross-sectional study.

Place and Duration of Study: Breast milk samples were collected from 200 patients suffering from mastitis and 106 lactating women as control who visited the center of breast examination in hospital Al- Sadder –in Najaf- Iraq, during the period from July/ 2015 to Jun/ 2016).

Methodology: A total of 88 strains of coagulase negative Staphylococci (CoNS) isolated from breast milk by culturing it on Baired parker agar and mannitol salt agar then characterized and subjected to species level by using biochemical tests and Vitek-2 system, slime detected by Congo red agar method (CRA) and icaD gene detection by PCR , with antibiotic resistance profile using Vitek -2 system (bioMérieux, France), AST-GP580 Gram positive susceptibility cards

Results: Slime production was detected in most isolates (86/88) 97.72% phenotypically, however, 62 isolates were typed to species level (40 isolates of S.epidermdis; 12 isolates of S.hominis; and 10 isolates of S.haemolyticus), all these strains have the slime production gene (icaD gene) and showed different antibiotic resistance profile.

Conclusion: This study showed a good correlation of presence of icaD gene with the antibiotic resistant.