Major challenges in diagnostic molecular microbiology are to develop a simple assay to distinguish Staphylococcus aureus from the less virulent but clinically important coagulase-negative staphylococci (CoNS) and to simultaneously determine their antibiotic resistance profiles. Multiplex PCR assays have been developed for the detection of methicillin- and mupirocin-resistant S. aureus and CoNS ...

The aim of the study was to investigate the occurence and species distribution of methicillin resistant staphylococci (MRS) in the nasal cavity of dogs. Nasal swabs were collected from 162 dogs entering private veterinary clinics in Hatay. Methicillin resistance was detected onto mannitol salt agar containing 2 μg/ml oxacillin and confirmed by mecA Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR). Bacterial ide...

An outbreak of infections with multi-resistant Staphylococcus aureus with unusual methicillin resistance at a Melbourne hospital was investigated by examining restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs) of total DNA digested with the rare-cutting endonuclease SmaI. The polymorphisms were identified by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and were analysed numerically to give quantitati...

To evaluate different methods for their abilities to detect methicillin resistance in small-colony variants (SCVs) of Staphylococcus aureus, 11 different methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) clones with the SCV phenotype were used in this study. The slow growth of SCVs often makes testing by disk diffusion or by automated methods invalid. Only detection of the mecA gene by PCR and the MRSA-Sc...

AIM This study was conducted to determine the occurrence of methicillin-sensitive and Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA) methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) from bovine mastitis and to characterize them with respect to antibiotic resistance gene mecA. MATERIALS AND METHODS A total of 160 mastitic milk samples were screened for the presence of S. aureus. The presumptive positive isolates were con...

The rate of infection by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has declined over the past decade, but it is unclear whether this represents a decline in S. aureus infections overall. To evaluate the trends in the annual rates of infection by S. aureus subtypes and mean antibiotic resistance, we conducted a 15-year retrospective observational study at two tertiary care institutions ...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate risk factors associated with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteremia emergence, its prognosis, and mortality-determining factors in critically ill patients in Colombia. METHODS A multicenter, retrospective cohort study conducted in 2005-2008 at 16 public and private reference health care institutions in Bogotá, Colombia, that form part of a national...

femA is a chromosomally encoded factor, occurring naturally in Staphylococcus aureus, which is essential for the expression of high-level methicillin resistance in this organism. The production of a low-affinity penicillin-binding protein, PBP2a or PBP2', which is intimately involved with methicillin resistance in S. aureus, is not influenced byfenmA. To elucidate a possible physiological funct...

We previously reported that deficiency of the lytH gene, whose product is homologous to lytic enzymes, caused the elevation of methicillin resistance in Staphylococcus aureus strain SR17238, a strain of S. aureus with a low level of resistance to methicillin (low-level MRSA) (J. Bacteriol. 179:6294-6301, 1997). In this study, we demonstrated that deficiency of lytH caused the same phenomenon in...