major nosocomial pathogen, and biocides including antiseptics and disinfectants have been used in order to prevent its infections and spreading. Biocides have a wide variety of uses, and their concentrations and exposure times vary according to usage. Recently, MRSA isolates with decreased biocide susceptibilities have been isolated from clinical samples, and MRSA isolates carrying antiseptic-r...

BACKGROUND The rapid emergence and spread of community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) has raised considerable public health concern in both developed and developing countries. The current study aimed to address the extent of this phenomenon in healthy preschool children of a developing country. MATERIALS AND METHODS We conducted a prospective study from April...

BACKGROUND Livestock-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (LA-MRSA) has a wide host range and is transmissible to humans, especially to those with close contact to colonized animals. This study presents the first data on the occurrence of MRSA in farm workers and livestock farms (pig, cattle and poultry) in the federal state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in northeast German...

Analysis of community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (c-MRSA) from Germany producing the Panton-Valentine leukocidin revealed a unique SmaI-macrorestriction pattern, different from epidemic nosocomial strains. This molecular pattern corresponds to those shown in c-MRSA strains from other countries in the European Union. All isolates exhibited resistance to fusidic acid, wh...

INTRODUCTION According to the existing literature, a heterogeneous sequence type (ST) or clones of community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) circulate in Europe. In Europe, the European clone that belongs to sequence type ST80 is predominant. METHODS The aim of the study was to investigate the phenotypic and genotypic characteristics and epidemiological data o...

The prevalence of MRSA in the turkey meat production chain in Germany was estimated within the national monitoring for zoonotic agents in 2010. In total 22/112 (19.6%) dust samples from turkey farms, 235/359 (65.5%) swabs from turkey carcasses after slaughter and 147/460 (32.0%) turkey meat samples at retail were tested positive for MRSA. The specific distributions of spa types, SCCmec types an...

OBJECTIVES MRSA poses a considerable public health threat to the community. The objectives of this study were to assess the prevalence of MRSA carriage and determine factors that were associated with MRSA carriage among outpatients who had used antibiotics in the previous three months and who lived in a high-density livestock farming area along the Dutch-German border. METHODS Cross-sectional...

BACKGROUND Livestock-associated MRSA (MC398) has emerged and is related to an extensive reservoir in pigs and veal calves. Individuals with direct contact with these animals and their family members are known to have high MC398 carriage rates. Until now it was assumed that MC398 does not spread to individuals in the community without pig or veal calf exposure. To test this, we identified the pr...

BACKGROUND The role of general practitioners (GPs) as reservoir and potential source for Staphylococcus aureus (SA) transmission is unknown. Our primary objective was to evaluate the prevalence of SA and community-acquired methicillin resistant SA (CA-MRSA) carrier status (including spa typing) among GPs and their patients in Belgium. The secondary objective was to determine the association bet...

The MRSA screen test (Denka Seiken Co., Ltd.), a commercially available, rapid (20-min) slide latex agglutination test for the determination of methicillin resistance by detection of PBP 2a in Staphylococcus aureus, was compared with the oxacillin agar screen test and PCR detection of the mecA gene. A total of 563 S. aureus isolates were tested. Two hundred ninety-six of the isolates were methi...