Molecular typing of epidemiologically unrelated Staphylococcus epidermidis recovered from dogs by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis

A total of 16 Staphylococcus epidermidis isolates collected from 14 dogs admitted to the Veterinary Medicial Teaching Hospital in Seoul National University over eleven months were examined for in vitro antibiotic susceptibility pattern with minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and slime production, a virulence-associated phenotype, and were genetically characterized by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). The frequency of resistance to antimicrobial agents tested was not high, with a susceptibility ranging from 56.3% to 100%. Three strains exhibited multiple drug resistance against amikacin (MIC, $32-64{\mu}g/ml$), ampicillin ($32{\mu}g/ml$), fosfomycin ($32-128{\mu}g/ml$) and gentamicin ($16{\mu}g/ml$). Vancomycin, ciprofloxacin and rifampin were effective antibiotics against the isolates. All isolates were slime producers ; strains isolated from dogs which died of bacteremia were more likely to produce slime than those isolated from dogs which survived. Chromosomal DNA fingerprinting of the isolates yielded 16 different genomic types with few common bands, indicating a variety of clones of S epidermidis were prevalent in the hospital. This study revealed that PFGE is an useful method for the genotype characterization of S epidermidis strains and this organism could probably be pathogenic in some dogs with severe disorders. Further works on a larger number of epidemiologically defined strains are required to assess these results.