Abstract

Mastitis is one of the common diseases of dairy cattle and an inflammatory response of the mammary glands tissue. Mastitis causes considerable loss to the dairy industry. Among several bacterial pathogens that can cause mastitis,Staphylococcus aureus is probably the most lethal agent because it causes chronic and deep infection in the mammary glands that is extremely difficult to be cured. The present study was to detect some of the virulence factors in the S. aureus isolated from 360 mastitis milk samples in Chaharmahel va Bakhtiari and Isfahan provinces of Iran via PCR by using specific primers. Among a 360 raw milk  samples, 86 samples contained 1250 bp fragment of the 23srRNA gene, 42 samples contained coa gene, 63 samples contained clfA gene, 69 samples contained IgG binding region gene, 22 samples contained  X  region coding gene protein A, 3 sample contained Toxic shock syndrome toxin gene (tst), 16 samples contained the exfoliative toxin A and  B genes, 10 samples contained agrI gene, 42 samples contained agrII gene, 19 samples contained agrIII gene and 15 samples contained  agrIV gene.

Key Words:  Bovine mastitis, Staphylococcus aureus, virulence factors, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), Iran.

Abbreviation

S. aureus, Staphylococcus aureus; coa, coagulase; clfA,clumping factor; tst, toxic shock syndrome toxin gene; agr, accessory gene regulator; eta, exfoliative toxin A; etb, exfoliative toxin B; PCR, polymerase chain reaction; TSST-1, toxic shock syndrome toxin 1.