fections. Prevalence of MRSA and distribution of MRSA sequence types in livestock in Italy are not known. However, surveys of foods of animal (pig) origin have showed an MRSA prevalence of 3.7% (1,10). In view of the low prevalence of MRSA ST398 in patients with no exposure to animals, food products currently seem to play a negligible role. However, this clone is likely spreading because of the...

In a previous study we have shown that public buses in Oporto, the second largest city in Portugal, were highly contaminated with MRSA. Here we describe the results of a similar study performed in another urban area of Portugal-Lisbon, the capital. Between May 2011 and May 2012, hand touched surfaces of 199 public buses in Lisbon were screened for MRSA contamination. Subsequently, the hands of ...

OBJECTIVES To analyse the possible relationship between consumption of old and new MRSA-active antibiotics and burden of MRSA in acute care hospitals in Catalonia during the period 2007-12. METHODS Fifty-four hospitals participating in the VINCat Programme were included. Proportion of MRSA (resistant isolates of Staphylococcus aureus per 100 isolates of S. aureus tested), incidence of new cas...

addition, both PVL-positive spa t034 isolates contained genes associated with hlb-converting phages, namely sak, chp and scn. Although we did not have detailed epidemiological information on all nine patients, it is notable that three of the patients in this study had recent exposure to pigs. In other settings, isolation of CC398 MRSA has been strongly associated with exposure to livestock, inc...

OBJECTIVE This study was performed to understand the epidemiology of community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) infections in southern New England children. METHODS A retrospective review was conducted of the medical records of children 0 to 18 years old with MRSA isolated by the Rhode Island Hospital microbiology laboratory (Providence, RI) between 1997 and 2001...

OBJECTIVES We unexpectedly identified MRSA isolates carrying mecC (mecC-MRSA) from a Danish swine farm located in eastern Zealand. The objective of the present study was to investigate the origin of these isolates and their genetic relatedness to other mecC-MRSA isolates from Zealand. METHODS WGS was used to infer the phylogenetic relationship between 19 identified mecC-MRSA isolates from the...

During routinely screening (50.000 milk samples on an annual basis) 14 MRSA ST398 strains were identified in the period of January 2008 to September 2008 in 14 different dairy herds located in the provinces Overijssel and Gelderland, The Netherlands. Molecular analysis was performed by Cfr9I PFGE, ST398-specific diagnostic PCR, spa typing, SCCmec typing and Panton-Valentine Leukocidin (PVL) gen...

Recently, we [E.M.C. D’Agata, G.F. Webb, M.A. Horn, R.C. Moellering Jr., and S. Ruan, Modellingthe invasion of community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus into the hospital setting, Clin. Infect. Dis. 48 (2009), pp. 274–284] proposed a deterministic mathematical model to characterize the factors contributing to the replacement of hospital-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphy...

During 1 year, samples were taken on 4 days, one sample in each season, from pigs, the floor, and the air inside pig barns and from the ambient air and soil at different distances outside six commercial livestock-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (LA-MRSA)-positive pig barns in the north and east of Germany. LA-MRSA was isolated from animals, floor, and air samples in the b...

Among 10 strains of community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) isolated in 2002 from patients with skin infections, seven harbored the Panton-Valentine leukocidin gene, two harbored the exfoliative toxin A gene, and one harbored neither of these genes. CA-MRSA isolates producing a variety of exotoxins are currently spreading in the Swiss community.