We use the molecular techniques of PCR and PFGE to identify MRSA from clinical isolates of Staphylococcus aureus causing infections among hospitalized patients in Benin-City, Nigeria. A total of 36 isolates were obtained from the University of Benin Teaching Hospital between July-September, 2007. The MRSA strains were selected according to their phenotypic characteristics (antibiotic resistant ...

In a recent article, Hussain et al. evaluated a commercial latex agglutination test (LA), the MRSA-Screen (Denka Seiken Co., Niigata, Japan), for rapid detection of penicillinbinding protein 2a (PBP2a) in mecA-positive and mecA-negative coagulase-negative staphylococci (CNS) (2). The sensitivity and specificity were 100 and 99.5% (2), respectively, although the MRSA-Screen was initially develop...

Mastitis is the most common and economically significant disease affecting dairy cattle. A variety of bacteria can be isolated from bovine mastitis cases. and are the most common causes of contagious and environmental clinical mastitis, respectively. Antimicrobial therapy is commonly implemented for mastitis prevention and control. Unfortunately, despite the best possible antimicrobial treatmen...

Detection of the mecA gene or PBP2a is considered the gold standard for detecting mecA-mediated methicillin resistance in staphylococci. Among available phenotypic methods, the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) has introduced the cefoxitin disk diffusion (DD) test for predicting the presence of mecA in S. aureus and CoNS, which is preferred over the oxacillin DD test. Automated...