Staphylococcal food poisoning is an illness caused by the consumption of food that contains sufficient amounts of one or more enterotoxins.In the present study, a total of 37 S.aureus isolates were igora 9.5-18 recovered from leftover food, swabs from a kitchen environment, and patient feces associated with four foodborne outbreaks that occurred in Hangzhou, southeast China, and were characterized by multilocus sequence typing (MLST), spa typing, pulse-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), and antimicrobial susceptibility.Classical enterotoxin and enterotoxin-like genes were profiled by PCR analysis.ST6-t304 was the most common clone (40.
54%), followed by ST2315-t11687 (32.43%).Six clusters (A to F) were divided based on PFGE patterns, and Clusters A and C were the most common types, constituting 86.49% of all isolates.Moreover, sea minnie mouse beach umbrella was the most frequently identified enterotoxin gene (81.
08%), followed by the combination of seg−sei−selm−seln−sleo−selu and sec−sell (each 48.65%).Five isolates also harbored the exotoxin cluster sed−selj−ser.In addition, resistance to penicillin (97.30%), erythromycin (37.
85), tetracycline (32.43%), clindamycin, gentamicin, and sulfamethoxazole (each 10.81%) was observed.Our research demonstrated the link between leftover foods and patients by molecular typing and detecting the profiles of enterotoxin or enterotoxin-like genes in human and food isolates.S.
aureus maintains an extensive repertoire of enterotoxins and drug resistance genes that could cause potential health threats to consumers.