Nowadays, research on bacteriophage therapy and its potential use in combination with antibiotics has been gaining momentum. One hundred and ten oral Staphylococcus aureus isolates were phage-typed and their antibiotic resistance was determined by standard and molecular methods. The prevalence of MSSA and MRSA strains was 89.1% and 10.9%, respectively. Nearly all (91.8%) analyzed isolates, whether MSSA or MRSA, were susceptible to the phages used from the international set. The highest lytic activity showed phages 79 and 52 A from lytic group I. The predominant phage groups were mixed, the I+III group and a mixed group containing phages from at least three various lytic groups. S. aureus strains sensitive to phage group I were usually resistant to penicillin and susceptible to ciprofloxacin, whereas the strains typeable with group V or group V with the 95 phage were susceptible to most antibiotics. Epidemic CA-MRSA strains (SCCmecIV) of phage type 80/81 carried Panton-Valentine leucocidin genes. Considering the high sensitivity of oral S. aureus to the analyzed phages and the promising results of phage therapies reported by other authors, phage cocktails or phage-antibiotic combinations may potentially find applications in both the prevention and eradication of staphylococcal infections.
Keywords: MRSA; PVL; Staphylococcus aureus; antibiotic resistance; bacteriophage; methicillin; oral cavity; phage therapy.