Group A Streptococcus (GAS), commonly known
as Streptococcus pyogenes, is one of the top ten
infectious causes of death globally. Increased
antibiotic resistance is the main cause of
streptococcal infection treatment failure.
Therefore, this study was conducted to evaluate
the occurrence, antimicrobial resistance, and
genetic characterization of S. pyogenes isolated
from different patients. A total of 60 pharyngitis
and tonsillitis throat swabs were obtained. Only 7
isolates (11.6%) were confirmed to be S.
pyogenes. The highest prevalence of S. pyogenes
was obtained from children, boys (26.6%)
followed by adults (males) (16.6%) while the
lowest prevalence was recovered from girls
(11.7%). On the other hand, no infection was
recorded in the case of females. All S. pyogenes
isolates were susceptible to ampicillin-sulbactam,
ciprofloxacin, chloramphenicol, doxycycline,
meropenem, and tetracycline. While 100%
showed resistance to amoxicillin-clavulanic acid,
cefotaxime, and cephradine followed by
ceftriaxone (71%) and cefuroxime (71%). Based
on the multidrug-resistance (MDR) profile, a total
of 6 out of 7(85.7%) S. pyogenes isolates were
resistant to 3 or more of β-lactam antibiotics. The
PCR assay revealed that the blaTEM, blaZ, bla IMP,
and blaCTX genes were detected in 57.1%, 28.5%,
57.1%, 42.8%, 15%, 11.3%, and 5.6% of the
isolates. To the best of our knowledge, this is the
global study about these beta lactamase genes in
Streptococcus pyogenes