Characteristics of Antibiotic Resistance of Airborne Staphylococcus Isolated from Metro Stations

Feng Zhou and Yuyan Wang
Additional contact information
Feng Zhou: Department of Clinical Medicine, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, China
Yuyan Wang: Department of Medical Microbiology and Parasitology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, China

IJERPH, 2013, vol. 10, issue 6, 1-15

Abstract: This study focused on the presence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in a metro system as an example of a public transportation system. The molecular characteristics of Staphylococcus were investigated to discern which strains were isolated from metro stations in Shanghai. These were compared with strains isolated from hospital treatment rooms and parks. Airborne Staphylococcus samples in the metro were resistant to an average of 2.64 antibiotic types, and 58.0% of the strain samples were resistant to at least three antibiotics; this was a significantly higher rate than strains from the park, but was lower than those from hospitals. The presence of two antibiotic resistance genes of Staphylococcus strains, mecA (28.0%) and qac (40.0%), were also found at significantly higher levels in metro samples than park samples, but did not differ significantly from hospital samples. Furthermore, 22.0% of the metro Staphylococcus samples were found to be biofilm-positive. The high rate of antibiotic resistance found in Staphylococcus samples collected from metro stations, and the discovery of antibiotic-resistant genes, indicate that the closed indoor environment and crowded passengers may accelerate the spread of antibiotic resistant strains. More attention should be paid to the inspection and control of antibiotic resistant strains in public transportation systems.

Keywords: Staphylococci; antibiotic susceptibility; mecA; qac; biofilm; metro stations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/10/6/2412/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/10/6/2412/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:10:y:2013:i:6:p:2412-2426:d:26402

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().