An overview of Livestock-Associated MRSA: prevalence, lineages, and treatment

Abstract

The objective of this review is to provide an updated overview of Livestock-Associated MRSA (LA-MRSA), highlighting its global prevalence, clonal lineages, transmission across animal host, and current treatment strategies with One Health perspective. Staphylococcus aureus is a Gram-positive, opportunistic, facultative anaerobe found in skin and mucosal layers of the human body. Livestock Associated Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (LA-MRSA) is one of the three types of MRSA classified based on epidemiological characteristics. Notorious strains of MRSA were found majorly in cities within Eastern Asia, South America, Europe and smaller regions scattered across other continents. Several lineages (like CC398, CC130, CC97 etc.) affect a wide variety of animals and their species along with transfer of infection to humans. LA-MRSA could cause many different issues including contamination of meat sold in markets leading to sickness amongst humans and infection amongst domestic animals which live in the same homes as healthy people. Treatments related to MRSA have been discussed widely from using natural materials to synthesis of new generations of antibiotics. It is stated that antibiotic resistance could emerge as one of the major causes for high mortality rate worldwide by 2050. This review will give an overview on the threat, prevalence, lineages and treatment of LA-MRSA and peek into the future of antibiotic resistance.