Evolution of sporadic isolates of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in hospitals and their similarities to isolates of community-acquired MRSA.

ABSTRACT: Forty-one methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) hospital isolates that clearly differed from the six major pandemic clones of MRSA in pulsed-field gel electrophoresis type, mecA and Tn554 polymorphism, and epidemic behavior were selected from an international strain collection for more detailed characterization. SpaA typing, multilocus sequence typing, and SCCmec (staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec) typing demonstrated extensive diversity among these sporadic isolates both in genetic background and also in the structure of the associated SCCmec elements. Nevertheless, the isolates could be grouped into restricted clonal complexes by using the BURST (i.e., based upon related sequence types) program algorithm, which predicted that most sporadic MRSA isolates evolved from pan

SUBMITTER: Aires de Sousa M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC179813 | biostudies-literature | 2003 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature