Staphylococcus aureus: Application of a rapid test for molecular typing of strains isolated from bovine mastitis

Staphylococcus aureus is the most important etiologic agent of contagious mastitis able to produce a number of virulence factors that may play important roles in the development of this disease. Recently, a rapid technique based on the amplification of the 16S-23S rRNA intergenic space (RS-PCR) was developed for S. aureus genotyping The aim of the present study was to characterize certain strains collected from North Italy herds to verify the presence of a specific genotype associated in Switzerland with severe clinical expression in the herd. In the 30 strains analyzed, our preliminary results showed the presence of four isolates similar to Switzerland genotype B and the possibility to link an electrophoretic profile to a specific pattern of virulence.